VLM prende il Superjet 100!


Contrordine, VLM il SSJ100 non lo prende piu'. Ordini cancellati.
http://atwonline.com/airframes/vlm-airlines-scraps-superjet-order

VLM Airlines scraps Superjet order

Belgian carrier VLM Airlines has canceled its order for Sukhoi SSJ100s.
In October 2014, VLM announced it planned to acquire up to 14 long-range versions of the Sukhoi SSJ100. Under a letter of intent with Ilyushin Finance, VLM took the option to lease up to four SSJ100LRs plus purchase rights on 10 more aircraft.
The first two aircraft were due to arrive on 12-year operating leases from April 2015. However, in March 2015 a delay in the initial deliveries until 3Q 2016 was announced, due to the need to certificate the long-range version by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
The deal has now been scrapped and VLM will look anew at finding a new aircraft to supplement or replace its existing fleet of 11 Fokker 50 turboprops.
“The SSJ will not go ahead,” VLM’s managing director Hamish Davidson told ATW. “I know a lot of work went into that [deal], but it doesn’t rule out continuing to look at how we re-fleet the business looking forward.”
The decision to drop the Russian regional jet was made primarily because of VLM’s exposure to potential risks from an aircraft whose long-range version had not yet achieved EASA certification.
Additionally, over the course of 2015 geopolitical factors—the rising tension between Russia and the West over the conflict in Ukraine—“became an ongoing concern,” Davidson said, although that was not the driving factor behind the decision to halt the deal.
VLM was the subject of a management buy-out from its parent company, Dublin-based CityJet, in fall 2014, just six months after CityJet was itself spun out of Air France-KLM, for which it had operated regional services.
Davidson, who took on the CEO role at Antwerp-based VLM in January, said decisions would be taken over the next six months on the future direction in which the company would grow. He hoped a defined plan would be in place by 4Q 2016.
“We most certainly won’t turn away from evaluating the potential of the new jets coming into the marketplace,” he said.
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