By Scott Hamilton
May 6, 2026, © Leeham News: AirAsia and Airbus announced today that the low cost carrier placed an order for 150 A220-300s. This record-breaking order for the type previously capped out at 90 orders. (Delta Air Lines has placed orders for 145 A220s, but in several transactions.) More than 1,000 A220s have now been ordered.
This is key order for Airbus, which wants to increase production of the A220 to 14/mo. Before now, the backlog was far from supporting this production rate.
A high-density version of the airplane, which can seat 160 passengers, is under development. AirAsia is the launch customer for this version.
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AirAsia is an exclusive Airbus customer. Over the company’s life, it ordered almost 600 A320 family members through March.
Deliveries will begin possibly in late 2027 but more likely will be in 1Q2028.
Airbus has since revised the timeline for going to rate 14/mo to the end of 2028. Artwork Credit: Leeham News. Production source: Airbus 1Q2026 earnings call.
Why the 220, and how about the Stretch?
Tony Fernandes, Chief Executive Officer of Capital A (the holding company of AirAsia), said that A220 will fly longer than the Airbus A320ceos it will replace. The A220 is better suited than the A321 for many routes or off-peak frequencies.
“My philosophy has been built on a very strong network. Two of the driving factors of AirAsia’s network are that 60% of our routes are routes that were never done before. We go into secondary and tertiary cities. And the second underlying principle of what we do is frequency. So, obviously, we’ve bought a lot of A321s, which have 244 seats. Not every route pairing could fill 244 seats,” Fernandes said.
“Even in the thick routes, for example, Kuala Lumpur-Singapore, where we fly every half an hour, some of those flights wouldn’t take 244 seats. Having an aircraft with 160 seats enables us to actually improve our margin by about two to three points and also build a much deeper network. Kuala Lumpur has gone from nowhere to become the number one hub in Asia and the number four hub in the world due to connectivity,” he said.
“When I bought the 320ceo, it only flew four hours. This aircraft can fly up to seven hours. In Asia, that has a lot of value for us as well,” Fernandes added. He wants Airbus to proceed with the stretch of the A220-300.
“Because we bought a lot of A320s, and those aircraft are coming to the end of their life, if Airbus makes [the A220-500 with] 180 seats, that’s a perfect replacement. We as low-cost airlines generally don’t like complexity, but now we’ll only have two types of aircraft, 220 and the 321. We really hope that the 220-500 is built.”
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