Air Baltic chief executive Martin Gauss expects the carrier’s first Bombardier CSeries aircraft on order will be delivered either in September or October.
Gauss tells Flightglobal during the IATA AGM in Dublin that the carrier will be provided with a firm date in August as per the contract signed with the Canadian manufacturer.
Once the delivery date is confirmed, Air Baltic will divulge the route and put tickets on sale, Gauss says. The airline boss says he will travel to Montreal in two weeks for a formal entry-into-service meeting.
Air Baltic will take delivery of seven of its 20 CS300s by January Gauss says.
Air Baltic is currently looking at “technical solutions” to provide onboard connectivity on its 20 CSeries jets. Once a provider is chosen, the technology will be retrofitted onto the aircraft at a later date, he says.
The Riga-based airline is also reviewing the seating capacity and the “thrust settings” of the jet.
Gauss tnough dismisses comments by John Slattery, Embraer’s chief commercial officer for its commercial aviation arm, that Bombardier priced the CSeries below cost to secure the Delta Air Lines order as “pure speculation”.
“Whatever price they agree you don’t know what other agreements are in place which might offset the price of the aircraft,” he says, adding: “I think its pure speculation and as long as Delta and Embraer are not disclosing the price to the public [then] it sounds like speculation”.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
