Air Baltic calm over additional A220 engine inspections

Air Baltic, the second-largest European operator of Airbus A220s, is following guidelines on engine checks in the wake of a series of failures which affected the SWISS A220 fleet. But the Latvian carrier points out that it uses "a different variant" of the Pratt & Whitney PW1500G engine "in contrast" to the aircraft operated by SWISS. Air Baltic has 20 A220-300s and was the first to receive the variant in Nov 2016. The airline had experienced its own grounding in Oct 2017 when it suspended operations with the fleet – then comprising 7 aircraft – to carry out engine checks. It stated at the time that the inspections related to an "external engine accessory" and that, as a launch operator of the CS300, it had expected to undertake upgrades during the early period of operations. <br/>