Swiss (LX, Zurich) is in talks with Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau) over the possibility of it becoming the launch operator of the A220-100. The Wall Street Journal quotes sources close to the negotiations as saying that once guarantees concerning the type's reliability and performance are put in place, a deal could be finalized as early as this week.
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.
As the CS100's launch customer, Swiss has thirty of the type on order from the Canadian manufacturer and which will be operated by its Swiss Global Air Lines (Zurich) subsidiary once delivered.
Meanwhile, in other Swiss-related news, the Lufthansa Group subsidiary is set to buy three more B777-300(ER)s adding to the six it already has on order from Boeing (BOE, Washington National). The Schweiz am Sonntag newspaper reports the new order was discussed at a recent board meeting.
With the arrival of the B777s in 2016, Swiss is also considering sending an undisclosed number of its A340-300s to its Edelweiss Air (WK, Zurich) subsidiary which specialises in leisure flights to European and intercontinental destinations.
