Brussels Airlines looks at wet-lease options for Sukhoi aircraft

Brussels Airlines is considering whether to move its wet-lease arrangement from Ireland’s CityJet, following longer-than-anticipated delays in solving technical problems with its Russian-built Sukhoi Superjet 100s (SSJ100s). The Belgian airline has used four of Dublin-based regional CityJet’s SSJ100s on some services since April 2017. That contract is scheduled to expire in March 2019 and the carrier is at the request-for-proposals (RFP) stage of determining who will be capacity provider. Brussels Airlines said an aircraft of the SSJ100’s size is ideal for some of its destinations that are unsuitable for larger aircraft, or where it wishes to offer more flights per day than would be possible with a larger aircraft, such as the Airbus A320. “We have had very positive reactions from our passengers with the SSJ100,” a Brussels Airlines spokeswoman said, “but it is still a very young aircraft and it has had some ‘childhood diseases.’” Every time such teething problems cropped up, it took longer to get the aircraft back into service than it would have been with other types. This has affected reliability figures, she said.<br/>