Air Baltic will reduce the number of routes it will fly during the summer of 2025 as the airline deals with the need to perform maintenance on the Pratt & Whitney PW1500 engines that power on its A220-300 fleet.
The airline, the flag carrier of Latvia, said that maintenance has been “prolonged” and caused “unexpected delays” because Pratt & Whitney has been unable to supply the carrier with spare engines to power the aircraft. Aside from cutting 19 routes from its schedule, the airline will also reduce frequencies to some destinations. It says that in total it will cancel 4,670 flights, affecting over 67,000 passengers.
Air Baltic says that “several” of its 49 A220s will be grounded at times during 2025. While the grounding of aircraft will be limited to a small portion of the airline’s fleet during the year, the loss of any aircraft scheduled to fly during the busy summer months will disrupt the airline’s operations.
Altogether, Air Baltic expects to cancel almost 4,700 flights during the summer. The airline’s fleet now consists of only A220-300s configured in a single-class, 148-seat configuration. The airline also operated the Bombardier Q400 for years but retired its remaining turboprops in February 2023.
