Earlier this week, we looked at the world's most active commercial aircraft by flight hours and cycles. While, being a younger design, the Airbus A220 didn't feature anywhere near the top of these lists, certain examples have already seen a lot of flying time. Let's see which carriers have the most-used A220s.

1 airBaltic

Latvian flag carrier airBaltic stands out among other operators of the A220 for the fact that every single aircraft in its fleet is one of the five-abreast Airbus jets. Specifically, data from ch-aviation.com shows that it has 39 at its disposal (of which 26 are active), and another 11 on order. Their average age clocks in at 3.2 years old.

The all-A220-300 nature of airBaltic's fleet means that the type is deployed on various routes. Many of these are short hops, but some really stretch the boundaries of the type's capabilities. For example, September 2021 saw airBaltic inaugurate a route from Riga to Dubai, with a whopping block time of nearly seven hours.

This means that airBaltic's most-used Airbus A220s generally have a relatively low number of flight cycles compared to the hours they've flown. Top of the pile among the entire world's A220 operators are YL-CSC (13,428 hours across 7,032 cycles) and YL-CSE (12,695 hours across 6,150 cycles). The Latvian flag carrier also has another five examples whose hours have exceeded 10,000.

Photo: Airbus

2 SWISS

Swiss International Airlines, also known as SWISS, is another key European A220 operator, with nine A220-100s and 24 A220-300s at its disposal. These are somewhat older than those flown by airBaltic, with average ages of 5.9 and 4.3 years old respectively. Its most-used examples rank third and fifth in the world by hours.

These are a pair of A220-100s registered as HB-JBA and HB-JBB, which had racked up grand total of 12,075 and 11,674 hours as of November 2022. However, they did so across a far greater number of cycles, namely 10,602 and 10,240.

This gives them average sector lengths of one hour and eight minutes, reflecting their short-haul usages and Switzerland's convenient location in central Europe. In contrast, airBaltic's most used pair of A220s have average sector lengths just below (YL-CSC) or just above (YL-CSE) the two-hour mark, reflecting the type's versatility.

Photo: Airbus

3 Delta Air Lines

While European carriers airBaltic and SWISS dominate the rankings regarding the world's most-used Airbus A220s, Delta Air Lines is the North American operator with the busiest examples. It has a large fleet comprising both examples, with 45 A220-100s and 14 A220-300s (plus 60 on order) at its disposal.

While none of its A220s had hit the 10,000-hour mark when least measured, three of these aircraft at Delta had exceeded 9,000 hours. These were N104DU (9,559 hours across 4,428 cycles), N109DU (9,322 hours across 4,323 cycles), and N110DU (9,004 hours across 4,185 cycles). These figures generate rather lengthy average sector durations in the region of two hours and 10 minutes.

What do you make of the Airbus A220? How many operators of the type have you flown with? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments!

Source: ch-aviation.com