The geopolitical context was unavoidable at Airbus’ “historic announcement regarding the A220 programme” at its Mirabel factory in Québec today — and certainly not with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney joining AirAsia’s Tony Fernandes — longtime boss of the airline and currently chief executive officer of the airline’s holding company Capital A — to announce the largest order for the A220, and the order that pushes the small airliner over the 1,000-order mark.
Fernandes noted specifically Carney’s much-reported “rupture in the world order” speech from the World Economic Forum in Davos this January, and much discussion covered the prospects of growing relationships between Canada and ASEAN, given AirAsia’s and Fernandes’ positions as powerhouse influences over the region.
Also in attendance: Canadian minister of industry Mélanie Joly (who is also minister responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec), Québec premier Christine Fréchette, Québec minister of economy Bernard Drainville, as well as Airbus’ commercial chief executive Lars Wagner and Airbus Canada boss Guillaume Chevasson — but interestingly no Airbus Group chief executive Guillaume Faury.
But despite much enthusiasm from Fernandes and indeed Carney for a larger, stretched, higher-capacity version of the A220 — the -500, formerly the Bombardier C Series CS500 — the AirAsia order was for the existing -300 midsized variant, though in the 160-seater configuration, adding eleven seats to the previous 149-passenger limit with the new second pair of overwing exits.
Indeed, the often complex history of the A220 was the topic of much discussion, with Fernandes recounting a story from 2017 where Airbus presented a strong argument about the then-C Series: “what a terrible plane it was, that I should not buy it, all the reasons why I shouldn’t buy it I should buy the A320: the C Series was a terrible aircraft. Six months later — and I still have the presentation — when Airbus took over this programme, the same man, Jerome, came to see me and brought me another presentation to say: this is the greatest aircraft Airbus have ever made.”
The Airbus volte-face about the aircraft was as remarkable and as sudden as Fernandes recalls, perhaps most famously with Airbus’ longterm sales supremo John Leahy deriding the C Series “a cute little airplane” a matter of months before Airbus acquired it — following, in what is now quite the ironic turn of events, a 300% tariff placed on the aircraft by the first Trump administration.
As might be expected in a bilingual country, much of the AirAsia-relevant discussion was in English, but multiple questions and answers to several key questions were in French. Fortunately, your author is also French, and has translated some of the more interesting réponses into English.
All in all, it was a truly fascinating and enlightening hour of speeches, questions and answers about an airplane that had not just been purchased — the A220-500.
