Breeze Airways today confirmed a purchase agreement for 20 more of Airbus’s A220-300 narrowbody airliners. The previously undisclosed order means that the new U.S. carrier is now set to take delivery of 80 of the aircraft, starting in the fourth quarter of this year.
The A220-300 is manufactured at the European airframer’s factory in Mobile, Alabama, from where deliveries to Breeze are anticipated at a rate of one per month over six and a half years. The airliners will feature a new paint scheme unveiled by the operators on September 13. They are powered by a pair of Pratt & Whitney PW1500G engines, which the manufacturer claims have 25 percent lower fuel burn than previous-generation equipment, as well as half as much nitrous oxide emissions.
Breeze started commercial operations in May 2021, serving cities including Hartford, Connecticut, and Providence, Rhode Island, in the northeastern U.S., and San Antonio, New Orleans, and 12 other communities across the South and Midwest U.S. JetBlue founder David Neeleman launched the airline, whose fleet already includes 13 of Embraer’s E190 and E195 aircraft, with 33 more on order.
So far, Airbus has delivered more than 170 A220s (formerly known as the CSeries, when the program was part of Bombardier) to 10 operators across Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa.