Airbus released its 2026-2045 Global Market Forecast in London in July, and the document makes an argument about aircraft size that runs counter to most of the industry’s direction. While manufacturers and airlines have spent two decades pushing toward larger narrowbodies, with more than 70% of the A320 family backlog now sitting on the A321neo and XLR, Airbus devoted a section of its forecast to the smallest aircraft it builds. The A220 has already created more than 400 new routes across North America, Europe, and Africa, meaning city pairs that had no scheduled service until an operator introduced the type.
Airbus named two examples. airBaltic flies Riga to Tenerife nonstop, a sector of more than 2,700 miles (4,345 km), and Melbourne to Alice Springs covers the Australian interior. Both are leisure routes that are long relative to the demand they carry, a shape that has historically defeated both regional jets and mainline narrowbodies. Airbus has identified more than 2,200 additional unserved city pairs it considers suited to the aircraft, split roughly between North America, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific. Joost van der Heijden, the manufacturer’s Head of Marketing for Commercial Aircraft, called the A220 “the ultimate network builder.”
The 400-Route Figure & What It Measures
One number in Airbus’ Global Market Forecast did more work for the A220 program than any other. The planemaker counts more than 400 new routes across North America, Europe, and Africa that the aircraft created, which it describes as routes unserved before the A220 allowed them to operate.
“By providing the right aircraft that can open these new routes, and clearly, the A220 is the ultimate network builder, in that already more than 400 new routes unserved before are being created with the A220 allowing them to operate,” Joost van der Heijden, Airbus Head of Marketing for Commercial Aircraft explained.
Leeham News reported the same figure from the London presentation, describing the 400 routes as thin sectors the A220 could potentially unlock across those three regions. The emphasis Airbus placed on it reflects what the manufacturer is arguing about the aircraft. These are not routes transferred from one type to another, which is what a straightforward regional jet replacement produces.
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The A220 sits in a gap the rest of the narrowbody market has moved away from. The A220-100 seats 108 to 133 passengers and the A220-300 seats 130 to 160, placing the family below the A320neo and above most regional jets. Airbus describes the type as capable of US transcontinental, Europe to Middle East and Central Asia, and trans-Asia operations, which is range that regional equipment cannot match. The combination is what the route argument rests on: enough range to reach distant destinations, few enough seats to fill on routes that cannot support a larger aircraft.
Riga To Tenerife Is The Route That Proves It
Airbus named two routes in its forecast as examples of what the A220 unlocks. The first is Riga to Tenerife, flown by airBaltic between Riga International Airport (RIX) in Latvia and the Canary Islands. Simple Flying reported the sector at more than 2,700 miles (4,345 km) nonstop, describing it as evidence of the type’s versatility in linking far-flung destinations while burning significantly less fuel per seat. airBaltic is the A220-300 launch operator and has ordered 90 of the type.
The second is Melbourne to Alice Springs, linking Melbourne Airport (MEL) to Alice Springs Airport (ASP) in Australia’s Northern Territory. Airbus listed both routes together, stating that routes such as Riga-Tenerife or Melbourne-Alice Springs “can be already efficiently served by aircraft like the A220.”
Neither is a business corridor. Both connect an origin city to a destination people travel to for leisure, and in both cases the distance is substantial relative to the traffic the route generates. That combination is what the industry means by long and thin, and it is historically the hardest shape of route to serve. A larger narrowbody brings trip costs the route cannot cover. Regional equipment cannot reach the destination. Airbus chose these two examples deliberately, because they show the A220 functioning as leisure network infrastructure rather than as the regional replacement the aircraft is more commonly described as.
The 2,200 Unserved City Pairs Airbus Has Mapped
The 400 routes already flying are the proof point. The number Airbus wants airlines to focus on is 2,200, the count of currently unserved city pairs the manufacturer identifies as suited to the A220’s capacity and range. Airbus Head of Marketing, Commercial Aircraft, Joost van der Heijden, broke down the figureduring the London presentation.
“In North America, also a potential for 800 more new city pairs with the A220, 600-plus in Europe and the Middle East/North Africa, for a total of more than 2,200 currently unserved routes that will become suitable for the A220 in the coming years,” he stated.
Airbus separately identifies strong potential for new A220 routes in Asia-Pacific, which accounts for the balance of the total. The geographic spread matters as much as the number. North America and Asia-Pacific are structurally different markets, with the former built around a mature hub network and the latter growing rapidly in secondary cities. That Airbus sees comparable A220 potential in both suggests the opportunity is not specific to one type of network.
Treating 2,200 unserved routes as a forecast requires some caution. These are routes Airbus has calculated the A220 could operate, not routes any airline has committed to opening or demonstrated demand for. The figure is a sales argument as much as an analysis, and it assumes airlines will choose to decentralize rather than concentrate traffic through existing hubs. What gives it weight is the 400 routes that have already opened, which is a record rather than a projection.
Why Networks Are Decentralizing
The route-opening argument rests on a demographic one. Airbus forecasts that the number of smaller urban centers will grow at a significantly faster pace than larger ones, reflecting shifting urban populations over the next 20 years. The GMF counts medium and small cities above 250,000 people rising from 2,251 today to 2,857 by 2045, an increase of 606, while megacities above 10 million grow only from 33 to 37. Urbanization is continuing, but it is happening fastest in places that have never had direct air service.
The route data already reflects that shift. The number of city pairs served by scheduled airlines grew from 17,800 in 2005 to 28,000 in 2025, and Airbus reports that 55% of all city pairs in 2025 were routes that had not existed 20 years earlier. Antonio Da Costa, Airbus Head of Market Analysis and Forecast, told the London presentation that an additional 532 airports now have scheduled airline service that were not on the global route network in 2005, pointing to Sucre, Daocheng in China, and the Vietnamese resort destination of Thanh Hoa as examples.
Those trends together describe the market Airbus is selling into. A world where small and medium cities multiply faster than megacities produces more city pairs generating real but modest demand, and modest demand over meaningful distance is the shape that defeats both regional jets and larger narrowbodies. Airbus frames this as networks decentralizing, with connectivity expanding beyond trunk routes to smaller and medium city pairs.
Qantas, The 717 Replacement & Production Rate
Qantas offers the clearest operator case for the argument Airbus is making. QantasLink configures the A220-300 with 137 seats, comprising 10 Business and 127 Economy, including 20 Qantas Economy Plus seats in a 2-3 layout. The aircraft is replacing Boeing 717s across the carrier’s domestic and regional network, and the airline has 29 on firm order with 12 delivered as of August 2026. Qantas reports the A220 carries up to 25% more passengers than the 717 while burning 25% less fuel and producing 25% fewer CO2 emissions per seat.
Range is what changes the network. Qantas describes the A220 as having almost double the range of the 717 at over 6,000 km, which it says allows the aircraft to fly between any two cities in Australia. The airline is using it to connect smaller capitals including Canberra and Hobart to its hubs in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Sydney, and expects it to open new domestic and short-haul international routes as more aircraft arrive. That is the long-thin leisure network thesis applied to a single country: an aircraft small enough to fill on routes that could not support a 737, with the legs to reach destinations the 717 could not.
The program behind it has scaled accordingly. A220 family orders passed 1,000 in May 2026 when AirAsia placed a record order for 150 A220-300s, becoming the first customer for a 160-seat configuration. Total orders stood at 1,110 as of August 2026 with 542 aircraft delivered and 538 in service across 25 operators. Delta is the largest operator at 93 aircraft. The global fleet has flown more than 2.17 million flights carrying over 240 million passengers to 540 destinations, and the type holds more than 55% market share in its category. The 400 routes Airbus counts came out of that fleet. The remaining 1,800 depend on how fast the next several hundred aircraft arrive.
