Air Vanuatu goes A220

Fleet renewal time in the Pacific!

A few days ago we commented how Air Kiribati was about to get brand new Embraer E-190 E2 aircraft, an order worth a significant portion of the small island’s GDP.

Today is the national airline of yet another tiny Pacific archipelago, Vanuatu, that placed a new aircraft order. In this case it has opted for the Airbus A220 (you can see our very own A220 flight report, of the time it was still called CSeries).

The 4-strong order, 2 A220-100 and 2 of the larger A220-300, represent quite a capacity expansion for an airline that at the moment operates just one jet aircraft (a Boeing 737-800) plus a couple of ATR turboprops and 3 smaller Twin Otters.

Let’s hope this investment makes it easier and cheaper to get to the country, that, as a curiosity, until the 1980s was jointly managed as a condominium by France and the UK.

The new A220 aircraft will likely be deployed on international routes towards Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the French territory of New Caledonia.