OREANDA-NEWS. On August 2, 2017, Pulkovo St. Petersburg Airport welcomed the first commercial flight of airBaltic Bombardier CS300 aircraft from Riga, Latvia. The airplane was traditionally greeted with a water cannon salute from the airport firetrucks.

Wolfgang Reuss, SVP of Network Management of airBaltic: „We have received a lot of positive feedback from our passengers about the improved flying experience with the new Bombardier CS300 aircraft. With the arrival of our next CS300, we have the opportunity to offer more routes on the new aircraft and now also for travelers between Riga and St. Petersburg.”

Evgeniy Ilyin, Chief Commercial Officer of Pulkovo Airport: „Pulkovo Airport and airBaltic have been partners for many years. We actively grow and advance with the international air transportation industry, implement new standards and technologies for passenger services and aircraft ground handling, and create new opportunities for travel. Today, St. Petersburg airport is one of the leaders in Russia in terms of infrastructure. We are excited to welcome the new airBaltic’s CS300, one of the world’s most modern, fuel-efficient and comfortable mid-range jets. We are confident that with airBaltic fleet expanding Pulkovo airport will regularly receive airBaltic CS300 aircraft that will take the passengers to various destinations in the airline’s wide route network”.

The new CS300 with 145 seats, offers excellent flying experience with benefits for passengers such as wider seats, larger windows, more hand luggage space in the cabin, improved lavatories, and other. The new aircraft is also much quieter — with four times smaller noise footprint. Moreover, it is the greenest commercial aircraft in the world, as it is the first aircraft to have a transparent declaration of the life-cycle environmental impact, helping to reduce CO2 and NOх emissions by 20% and 50% respectively.

As announced previously, the Latvian airline airBaltic is the launch operator for the CS300 aircraft, and has ordered 20 CS300 aircraft. airBaltic started Bombardier CS300 commercial operations on December 14, 2016.

airBaltic currently has six CS300 aircraft and plans to grow the number to 8 CS 300 by the end of 2017.