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Airbus Increases The Range Of The A220-300
Airbus is planning to offer an additional range increase on its largest A220, the A220-300. The increase will be offered from the middle of this year and will add some 200 nautical miles to the range of the narrowbody jet. (simpleflying.com) More...
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Would think a hub in Anchorage, AK cold make this change very attractive to cover key Asia cities and the USA....
Read the article and found it's simply a paper change. No physical change to the aircraft, but AB will offer this "option" to their customers. Why wouldn't they just make this better range a feature of the plane? I presume they will also charge for this? Seems like an unfair money grab if all they did is rework the numbers and said, we can take more fuel on board.
Doing the paperwork to get the authorities’ approval costs money and someone has to pay for it. You can also think of it as airbus giving its customers who don’t need it a small price break. It makes sense to me.
Most airframers will charge for anything they can get away with. Such as, making the "MCAS is active" indicator an option on the glass cockpits which the LCCs chose to delete from their orders for a new version of some other manufacturer's workhorse. Or wiring sensitive software to just one pitot tube. It's business - until someone goes too far, an option is deleted and aircraft start falling (or diving) out of the sky.
The A220 is relatively young in its lifespan, having started as a clean-sheet for Bombardier. This kind of open evolution is inevitable and speaks to an industry which will continue to seek improvements. I regard the development as positive.
The A220 is relatively young in its lifespan, having started as a clean-sheet for Bombardier. This kind of open evolution is inevitable and speaks to an industry which will continue to seek improvements. I regard the development as positive.
Yes, but those examples are changes or physically doing something. They simply crunched the numbers and said, the airframe can have a higher MTOW so we can add more fuel for better range. The range is there whether the customer wants it or not, and now they all know it. My guess is that AB will have to change the certification en mass or this becomes a give away that they throw in when selling to a customer.
I forsee more non planned fuel stops in Gander coming from Europe if they're using this plane. Been like that with the 727 wiht strong headwinds. although I don't see why you would use a small plane like this on such a long connection, especially big hubs like AMS..
