Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau) has confirmed that Swiss (LX, Zurich) will be the launch operator of its CSeries line of twinjets. The announcement follows months of negotiations between Bombardier and the Lufthansa (LH, Frankfurt International) subsidiary where the latter sought guarantees concerning the type's reliability and performance. As such, the first A220-100 is slated to enter revenue service with the carrier during the first half of next year.
The CS100's original launch operator, Sweden's Malmö Aviation (Malmö), announced in September of last year it would not be taking on the role citing concerns over the aircraft's incident-ridden flight-testing programme.
Swiss, also the type's launch customer, has thirty CS100s on order from the Canadian manufacturer.
