Market For Pre-Owned Small Narrowbodies Likely To Increase, Says Jetcraft Commercial CEO

A rationalization of fleets will bring more Airbus A220s and Embraer E1s on to the second-hand market, believes the president of sales and leasing company Jetcraft Commercial.

More A220s are likely to appear in the marketplace in the near future and are likely to be snapped up quickly by other operators, Raphael Haddad said.

Air Senegal recently disposed of a pair of A220-300s, which quickly found new homes; similarly, EgyptAir’s entire fleet of 12 A220-300s that was acquired by lessor Azorra have also found new operators almost immediately.

Haddad said he was aware of another carrier that planned imminently to shed its A220s, “not because it’s a bad aircraft, but because they’re having difficulty integrating them int their fleet.”

Additionally, a batch of five A220-300s previously owned by Russian lessor GTLK, which have never flown operationally and which have been sitting at Maastricht in the Netherlands, are the subject of a bidding war by several parties.

“I know that, if I have A220s from the secondary market in my portfolio today, I can place them.”

The issue affecting the A220 second-hand market was the ability of engine maker Pratt & Whitney to keep up the pace of maintenance and solve the problems of the aircraft’s powerplants, he said.

With their seating capacity in the 130 to 150-seat range, Haddad sees the A220 as true crossover jets, as they are moving into territory previously occupied by the Airbus A318 and A319, Boeing 737-500 and -700.

There remain relatively few A220s available in the secondary market. Far more E190s are available and, if numbers continue to increase, this will start to affect their price in the pre-used market, Haddad said.

E190s are increasingly taking over the roles previously held by Bombardier CRJ1000s and Boeing 737-500s: “It was fashionable at one point to bring in regional jets, or the equivalent of the 190” – Haddad classes only the A220 and the E195 as small narrowbodies, and the E190 and E170/175 as regional jets – “but sometimes that added extra complexity or multiple types [to fleets].”

The A220, in particular, was a sophisticated machine, like the B787 or the A350, that required different maintenance, he said.