airBaltic has unveiled the livery of its 50th Airbus A220-300 aircraft. The design was selected from a contest with 840 entries and features elements representing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The Latvian carrier’s new livery includes an artistic depiction of a girl with flowing hair crowned by a traditional wreath, alongside the Latvian flag.
The airline launched the design contest in November 2023, allowing airBaltic Club members to vote on their favorite designs. Out of 21 shortlisted designs, the winning entry received over 30% of the votes. The final sketch was modified to meet the A220-300’s technical requirements.
Airbus Canada employees painted the livery using 21 colors over 18 days, employing a stencil overlay technique for the first time. The aircraft is expected to be registered as YL-ABX but has not yet been delivered to airBaltic. It completed its first flight on January 21 under test registration C-FPBZ and is set to join the fleet in February.
Martin Gauss, president and CEO of airBaltic, stated that since launching the A220-300 in 2016, it has become central to their operations. The delivery marks the completion of their initial order, with another 40 aircraft in backlog. During the Dubai Airshow in November 2023, airBaltic added another 30 A220-300s to its order and supplemented it with ten more in August 2024.
Gauss commented on reaching halfway towards their goal of operating 100 A220-300 aircraft by 2030: “We are glad to be here with our long-standing partner Airbus and stakeholders to celebrate the reveal of our special milestone aircraft.”
According to Cirium’s Diio Mi airline planning tool data from February, airBaltic is the second-largest operator of the A220-300 based on weekly flights. They operated 1,032 weekly flights compared to JetBlue’s 1,087. Despite having fewer total block minutes than JetBlue—390,934 versus JetBlue’s 658,151—airBaltic maintains between 109 and 175 daily flights with this aircraft type.
