President and Chief Executive Officer of airBaltic Martin Gauss has successfully completed his Airbus A220 type rating training course, enabling him to perform captain’s duties on the aircraft and becoming the first airline CEO in the world to have performed type rating on the Airbus A220.
Martin Gauss, who began his professional career as a Boeing 737 pilot back in 1992, has maintained his commercial pilot’s licence throughout his career. The Airbus A220 type rating training was performed at airBaltic Training Center in Riga, Latvia and officially completed this year on October 1.
Since May 2020, airBaltic operates all of its flights only on the Airbus A220-300, thus minimizing the complexity and benefiting from the additional efficiency provided by the aircraft.
The Airbus A220-300 has performed beyond the company’s expectations, delivering better overall performance, fuel efficiency and convenience for both passengers and the staff. This aircraft offers an excellent flying experience with such benefits for passengers as wider seats, larger windows, more hand luggage space in the cabin, improved lavatories and much more.
The new aircraft is also considerably quieter – with a four times smaller noise footprint. Moreover, at the moment 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 NOX emissions by 20% and 50% respectively.
