Airbus is preparing to announce what it’s calling a “historic” deal for the A220 programme on Wednesday, May 6, at its Mirabel, Quebec assembly facility. AirAsia X is closing in on an order for approximately 150 aircraft — a commitment that would instantly make the Malaysian low-cost carrier the single largest A220 customer in the programme’s history, overtaking Delta Air Lines’ standing order of 145 jets.
Bloomberg first reported the advanced negotiations on Monday, May 4, citing sources familiar with the discussions. Reuters subsequently confirmed the expected scale and timing. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Quebec Premier François Legault, and AirAsia co-founder Tan Sri Tony Fernandes are all expected at the Mirabel facility for the formal announcement. Export Development Canada is expected to help finance the order.
A Reversal Decades in the Making
The deal carries a pointed historical footnote. Bombardier once approached AirAsia with the CSeries — the aircraft Airbus rebranded as the A220 after its 2018 takeover of the programme — offering a high-density 160-seat CS300 configuration. AirAsia passed. Now Fernandes is reportedly travelling to Canada to sign the largest single-customer commitment the aircraft has ever seen.
The CS100 became the A220-100. The CS300 became the A220-300. And the jet AirAsia once declined has since accumulated 959 firm orders from 34 customers, logging its 501st delivery as of March 2026.
Why the A220-300 Makes Sense for AirAsia Now
The strategic logic isn’t complicated. Fernandes has said publicly:
“We want to go to places where the A320 is just too big.”
The A220-300 seats between 110 and 149 passengers — EASA certified a 149-seat high-density layout in 2021 — with a range of up to 3,450 nautical miles. Secondary cities across India, China, and Southeast Asia fall within reach on routes where an A320 would mean flying half-empty. The aircraft’s Pratt & Whitney PW1500G geared turbofan engines deliver meaningfully lower per-seat fuel burn, and the airframe runs roughly six tonnes lighter than the A319neo, with operating cost advantages of up to 12 percent. List price for an A220-300 sits at approximately $91.5 million, against $101.5 million for an A319neo.
AirAsia completed a sweeping corporate consolidation in January 2026, folding every AirAsia-branded carrier under AirAsia X Berhad to form what the group calls the “Enlarged AirAsia X.” The airline has simultaneously cancelled its fifteen A330-900neo firm orders and confirmed the widebody fleet will exit over five to six years — leaving the group as a narrowbody-only carrier built around the A321XLR and, if this deal closes, the A220-300.
Programme Implications
An order this size has consequences well beyond AirAsia’s network planning. Airbus currently produces seven to eight A220s per month across Mirabel and its Mobile, Alabama facility, against a break-even rate of roughly 14 per month. The manufacturer is targeting 12 aircraft per month by the end of 2026 and 13 by 2028. Ernest Arvai of US aerospace consultancy AirInsight was direct:
“This new order puts the program on the path to profit. It certainly gets it much closer to the break-even point, and it gives the airplane some additional market momentum.”
The order also arrives as Embraer’s rival E2 family outpaced A220 sales by a three-to-one margin last year — a pressure point Airbus will be relieved to address with a headline-grabbing Southeast Asian win. It would mark the A220’s first significant low-cost carrier customer in a region where nearly 90 percent of A220 flights currently do not operate.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury stated as recently as April 28 that conditions for launching a stretched A220-500 variant were “not yet there.” An order of 150 jets from a major LCC, historically speaking, is exactly the kind of commercial signal that accelerates those internal conversations.
Wednesday’s Mirabel announcement will be covered as it happens. The deal structure — expected to include a mix of firm orders and options — and the confirmed delivery timeline are the details to watch.
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