Swiss (LX, Zurich) has announced it will wet-lease up to six A220-300s from airBaltic (BT, Riga) for the Winter 2022/23 season, alongside an ongoing capacity purchase agreement with Helvetic Airways (2L, Zurich).
"This collaboration with airBaltic will enable us to further stabilise our own flight schedules and give our customers even greater reliability for making their travel plans. On top of this, it should also help further relieve the present pressures on our cabin crew corps," Chief Commercial Officer Tamur Goudarzi Pour said.
The airline underlined that the wet-lease would be operationally efficient thanks to fleet commonality. Swiss operates nine A220-100s and twenty-one -300s, making it Europe's second-largest operator of the family behind airBaltic (which has thirty-six -300s in its fleet).
Swiss does not operate any regional or small narrowbody aircraft in-house. It wet-leases a substantial fleet of Embraer regional jets from Helvetic Airways under a long-term partnership covering a minimum of six aircraft with more added depending on demand. In the current summer season, Helvetic is operating four E190s, seven E190-E2s, and four E195-E2s on behalf of Swiss, the ch-aviation fleets module shows. Swiss does not wet-lease any other aircraft.
airBaltic is actively pursuing ACMI opportunities for its fleet of A220-300s and has an existing relationship with Lufthansa Group. It currently wet-leases fiver aircraft to Eurowings (EW, Düsseldorf) and two to EW Discover (Frankfurt International), alongside two wet-leased to SAS Scandinavian Airlines (SK, Copenhagen Kastrup).
