Airbus Canada has inked the largest commercial airliner deal in Canadian history with a deal to sell 150 A220-300s to Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia. The deal is worth $19 billion. Canadian officials, including Prime Minister Mark Carney, did a victory lap during the announcement. Carney met with AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes on a trade mission last fall and said the deal is part of an overall plan to increase trade with Asia. “We shared a vision of deepening ties between those countries that, in this crisis that we’re still living through, are choosing to build in the face of adversity—countries that have the confidence to open up, to link their economies, to invest in their workers, to move forward, not turn back,” Carney said.
All the aircraft will be built at Airbus’s Mirabel, Quebec, factory. The aircraft was designed and initially built by Bombardier as the CSeries, but a trade dispute with the U.S. led to Airbus taking majority ownership of the program. Although highly regarded for its efficiency and passenger comfort, it has struggled with reliability problems, particularly with the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines. Airbus Canada CEO Guillaume Chevasson said the engine problems are largely behind them and he’s hoping the big deal will help the company achieve a profitable production rate of about 13 aircraft per month. It’s now turning out about 7.5 per month.
The engines run on a 15% maple syrup mixture I’m told.