Extra exits, bread trucks, and bankruptcies

Well, let's head up to Mirabel, where Airbus teased a last-minute major announcement, told everybody, "Get to Montreal by 2:00 PM or else." And there was a lot of speculation that we were about to hear about the A220-500, but it seems that that's not the case.

But nonetheless, a very interesting announcement.

AirAsia has ordered 150 A220-300s.

That is a firm order, the largest in A220 history, and it also takes the total A220 order book past 1,000 aircraft for the first time.

Not only that, but they have ordered Airbus's newest cabin configuration for the A220, which will now seat up to 160 passengers through the inclusion of an extra overwing exit on both sides of the aircraft.

Hmm.

What this is not is a fuselage stretch to an A320-500.

That was rumored hotly for the last 24 hours since we learned about this.

This is not what that is, even though I feel like we've been talking about the A220-500 for a long time.

This is not that.

What it does, I think you may have just said, is, is they are installing another overwing set of exits, which enables them to add, what is it, four additional rows of seats at, at quite a tight seat pitch.

But the aircraft will remain in the presumably 2-3 configuration that passengers love because it's so comfortable.

But there is a great write-up of all of the possibilities leading up to what this announcement was from John Walton's "The Up Front" that I read yesterday at my sad Herndon, Virginia, dinner alone, where my phone didn't work.

But a great analysis of all of the things this could have been or might be in the future for what the A220 family of aircraft could be if they stretch and could have been that announcement.

It could have been a true successor, not successor, supplement to the A320neo MAX Pax configuration, but this is not that, which is surprising.

I think in less uncertain terms, we will see at some point an A220-500.

Absolutely.

I'm surprised that we didn't see it here with 150 firm orders.

Yeah.

That's a lot.

Not to say that they can't upgauge that order in the future.

I mean, that's pretty common to see an airline put down a deposit or firm order for the smaller variant, and they'll upgrade in the future if and when that aircraft becomes available.

But a little surprising to me that they go with this particular version of the A220, which is, of course, now the densest version of that aircraft, as Airbus has kind of been eking, squeezing as much out of its existing airframes as possible.

We saw that with the A350 new production standard, I think that Iberia was the first customer of, where they slimmed down the sidewalls to increase the amount of available space to plop seats down, which enabled some, I guess, moderately better than it would've been otherwise configurations, where they added an extra seat per row.

But surprisingly, this is not that.