Air France’s first Airbus A220-300 has left the paint shop sporting the carrier’s livery. The airline’s flight crews are preparing to welcome the aircraft, which delivers a 20 percent reduction in fuel burn and a smaller noise footprint, this September at Paris-CDG.
On Monday (July 26, 2021), Air France announced that their first of 60 Airbus A220-300s has left the paint shop in Mirabel, Canada and will be delivered at the end of September. All the carrier’s flight crews are preparing to welcome the aircraft, which embodies Air France’s sustainability commitments, at Paris-Charles de Gaulle. The aircraft will deliver a 20 percent reduction in fuel burn and a 34 percent smaller noise footprint compared to the Airbus A318s and A319s it will replace on Air France’s short and medium-haul network. The A220-300 features the airline’s new livery, as well as the iconic winged seahorse on the front of the fuselage. The new aircraft will accommodate 148 passengers in a 3-2 cabin configuration, with each seat featuring Type A and C USB ports and Wi-Fi access from personal devices.
Prior to arrival at Paris-CDG next September, the aircraft will undergo a series of ground and inflight tests. Upon arrival, the aircraft will be used for over a month to train Air France’s flight crews, some of whom began the type-rating process last summer. The airline has set up two core groups of qualified crew members, namely pilots and flight attendants, for training colleagues within Air France’s framework of in-house training validated by authorities. In September 2020, eight instructor pilots attended an eight week theoretical and practical training course at the Airbus training center in Montreal. Currently, they are training colleagues, including an additional 28 instructors who will complete the pilot launch team. The training utilizes a Full Flight Simulator (FFS) mounted on jacks and assembled at Air France’s Paris-CDG flight simulation center, which will be supplemented b approximately 20 flights in real conditions.
Similarly, core groups will be used for training cabin crew members, with 14 flight attendants trained in Zurich between September and December 2020. The flight attendant group is currently finalizing training manuals and content which will be used for colleague training from September 2021. The core group of trainers has selected a further group of 37 flight attendants who will complete practical flight training for cabin crews as the A220 enters service. Air France has installed two A220 door models at the Air France Crew Academy at Paray Vielle-Poste, near Paris-Orly to train approximately 2,500 flight attendants.
Source: Air France