Founded in 1993 to offer services between London City Airport and Dublin, CityJet has previously partnered with Virgin Atlantic and Air France. Currently, the company has a contract with SAS performing flights for the Scandinavian airline with CRJ900 jets.
This week, company CEO Pat Byrne revealed in an interview with CH-Aviation that CityJet will add E190 and E195 jets to its fleet in 2022.
According to him, there is a scarcity of CRJ900 aircraft, produced by Bombardier, and that is why Embraer aircraft proved to be an attractive option for the so-called ACMI service (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance, and Insurance).
Initially, there will be five E-Jets whose terms of the deal were not revealed by Byrne. They will join the 20 CRJ900 currently operated and which can win the turboprop company as well.
CityJet is considering operating the ATR72 and Dash 8-400 models, but the study is still preliminary.
CityJet’s interest in E-Jets coincides with reports by Scandinavian Airlines regarding interest in Embraer’s aircraft. It is not clear, however, whether the two airlines intend to establish an agreement to that effect.
SSJ100 operator
CityJet has already had in its fleet several regional aircraft, especially the four-engine BAe 146/Avro RJ85. In 2016, the company received seven Russian Sukhoi SuperJet 100 jets, but in 2019 it returned them to the lessor for lack of spare parts.
