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The Airbus A220 (formerly the Bombardier C-Series) is a clean sheet design and by most accounts, one of the best designs of its class today. It widely considered to be a next generation commercial aircraft, and will be unsurpassed by competitors for a couple of years until they catch up with newer designs. It’s enjoyed rave reviews by consumers and airplane nerds love it.

Delta has already bought a bunch and I look forward to these planes becoming more and more common.

Obligatory Wendover Productions video on the A220 and the fight with Boeing

https://youtu.be/V1YMPk3XhCc

⬐ benhurmarcel

It's also too small

⬐ wenc

No I don’t think so.

⬐ disintegore

IIRC, Boeing muscled the C-Series out of the market with race-to-the-bottom tactics, which eventually led to the Airbus acquisition of the program. If Airbus manages to meet its targets with the A220 this might constitute in ironic justice.

⬐ skylanh

My memory is that Bombardier expanded into territory they had never been in; outsourced to their partners a lot of details; had significant issues during major-part integration; and faced huge timeline crunches and overruns.

They also missed completion and delivery of air-frames on contracts with regional airlines. And other signs of "we messed up" on a project.

There seemed to be lots of complaints at the time (on Canadian forums and news-stories) about how the family that owns Bombardier would have been fired as C-levels in a public company based on this fiasco.

OTOH, I haven't heard anything about this in a long time.

⬐ wenc

I look forward to the day when most of my regional flights are on A220s. CRJs are a little long in the tooth. ERJs are decent but A220s are much better.

Cabin config is of course airline dependent but in one of the default configurations the A220 middle seat is actually wider than the flanking seats. In a world no one cares about customer comfort this is a nice reversal.

As a frequent flyer customer I find comfort has much more to do with aircraft than cabin service: I flew 2 United segments in the past few days on 737 equipment. United flight attendants are the highest paid among US airlines but United doesn’t spend enough money on ops. Aircrafts had so many technical issues and both segments were heavily delayed and very uncomfortable. No amount of customer service would have helped.

If anyone finds the operation of airlines a fascinating topic, you might like Wendover Productions: https://www.youtube.com/user/Wendoverproductions

How airlines price flights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72hlr-E7KA0

The little plane war https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1YMPk3XhCc

Why planes don't fly faster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1QEj09Pe6k

The economics of Airline Class https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

How airlines schedule flights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGXahSnA_oA

I just recently found the channel. So much good stuff. (My unrelated favorite is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j48Z3W35FI0 How the US government will survive doomsday.)

⬐ anitil

Wendover is truly fantastic. Also a very soothing voice, which I'm sure helps