CS300 Carries The Growth Of Baltic Aviation

Transcript

Martin Gauss:In Australia, 16,000 kilometers from the Baltics away, who hasn't been to the Baltics, please raise your hand. So a couple of people, okay. It's northeastern Europe, south of Finland. It's 3 Baltic states, about 6 million people living there. In Finland, the same number, 5.5 million people, so to get a perspective. Hi, Martin. Air Baltic is the largest carrier in the Baltics. We are serving the 3 Baltic capitals, and we have last week announced an order for more aircraft, and I show you what we're going to do in the Baltics to grow the Baltics. We have today a fleet of, by the end of the year, 34 aircraft consisting of Boeing, classic Boeing 737-300s and -500s, And we have Q400 turboprops, and we have already as a launch operator Bombardier CS300 in operation, and we took a decision to go to a single fleet and to have in the future a minimum of 50 150-seater aircraft, very fuel-efficient aircraft, 22% less fuel burn than our current jets. We already on that aircraft, being the launch operator, have carried more than 1 million passengers just on that aircraft type, So we have a good experience before we took a decision to go for a single fleet and focus the future business of airBaltic on the, on 150-seater technology with the latest engine technology having these fuel savings. We get from these 1 million passengers overwhelming responses on the aircraft. It's, it's the latest technology. It's not only fuel saving, it comes with lower noise. lower emissions, longer range, faster speed, can fly higher. So all these attributes together with a very nice cabin. So passengers are actively writing to us how good that feeling was. So also this took part in this decision-taking to have only one aircraft type for the future, and we picked that one. We have now, after 1.5 years operation of that new aircraft type, real data. So it's not marketing data from a manufacturer. This is data which we have from operating the aircraft on the same routes against our Boeing aircraft, and what you can see is that we get up to 24% fuel saving flying the same sector. We, of course, took a decision to invest in an aircraft which is more fuel saving, but what we have now, we have an aircraft with a couple of more seats being able to fly even longer or on the same routes, and we are saving 24%. which is a significant number if we look at the current fuel price increase. We call it a natural hedge to invest into the future and have such modern aircraft. Another example where airBaltic is having a problem today, still we have 12 Q400, very efficient turboprop aircraft, but we are not using them on the right routes. Historically, they, they were coming into our fleet and we were using them, but we're using them today on routes which are up to 3 hours. So, and that is not optimal anymore, it was good when they came in. So here you see a comparison, if we take the new aircraft on the same route, what will happen? First of all, the flight time reduces significantly from the turboprop to a jet because it's on a very long route. The fuel burn goes up, but, but not so significant, but the biggest difference of course is I have double the seats. And double the seats and a low fuel burn with the new technology means I can have operating costs which are on the same route 57% less, and that is actually flown on the route. So that is very significant if you're going to go forward and you want to reduce your cost by going for a single fleet, and that will enable airBaltic to continue growing in the Baltics. What are we doing? We have the main hub Riga, Latvia, that's the capital of Latvia. To the north we have Estonia with Tallinn as as an airport we serve, and in the south we have Lithuania with Vilnius. These 3 Baltic capitals, we are serving all 3 cities where Riga functions as a hub. From the other 2 cities, we are serving point-to-point routes. We do today 70 destinations plus. We're going to increase. We connect— one of the targets is to connect the Baltics with one stop to the world. For example, Sydney you can reach in the winter season you can reach with one stop via Abu Dhabi, Riga, and we try to reach every point in the future with one stop. We don't fly any long-haul despite the fact that this new aircraft flies 30% longer, so our longest sector is 6.5 hours where we serve from Riga, Abu Dhabi. We just added Lisbon, so we can serve with this aircraft routes up to 7 hours unrestricted, but we also use it on the very short sectors within within the Baltics. And in general, what we do, we have a 2-concept where we have a business class in the front, traditional business class, and a movable curtain where we have a low-cost economy cabin. These new aircraft coming into us, we have 8 already. The 9th aircraft, we started acceptance this Monday in Canada. We will get another 6 this year, another 8 then next year because we placed a new order, and the total we will have by the year 2024 is 50, or if we exercise options, we have some options, then we could have up to 80 aircraft, all the same type, by the year 2025. We have a little issue at the moment. The aircraft is called Bombardier CS300, and while we speak, that might change. Airbus took over that aircraft program, and we have no idea what our aircraft is called next week. They don't tell us. We asked them, they were here during the IATA conference and we tried to get the name out because you have an aircraft, you take it in the hangar, it says there the name of the aircraft, the moment you take off it's not the same name anymore. They said they will send us stickers to Riga so that we can put a sticker onto the name, which I really try to understand what the name of my aircraft is. I'm accepting it today, I'm flying out and it has a different name. But we're looking forward to fly these then smallest Airbuses in— it can happen tonight, I don't know, it can happen tonight, can happen next week, but it's supposed to happen in the next days. Looking forward to this and looking forward to the growth which we can then continue to deliver in the Baltics. And I think I still have 3 minutes time left, Peter, so I give it back to you in case there are questions. Yeah.

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