Airbus A220

The A220 looks like a safe aircraft, but its record is short. It has flown about 2.6 million passenger flights since 2016, and in that time one person has died in connection with an A220 flight. That is a good start, not proof. A fleet this young has not yet faced the rare combinations of failure and human error that bring down older types, so our score leans on the record of similar modern jets.

What the A220 is and where you fly on it

Bombardier launched the CSeries as a clean-sheet 100- to 150-seat jet. It first flew in 2013 and entered service with Swiss in 2016. Bombardier ran short of money, and Airbus took control of the programme in 2018 and renamed it. About 450 have been built and roughly 430 are flying.

There are two sizes. The A220-100 (formerly CS100) seats about 100 to 120; the A220-300 (CS300) seats about 120 to 150. Delta is the largest operator and uses both on US domestic routes. airBaltic flies an all-A220-300 fleet out of Riga. You will also find it with Swiss, Air Canada, JetBlue, Breeze, Air France and Korean Air. The cabin has five seats per row (two plus three), which makes it easy to spot.

Design features that matter for safety

The A220 has full fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary controls with sidesticks and flight envelope protection, so the computers stop the pilot from stalling or overstressing the aircraft in normal operation. We group it with fourth-generation jets such as the A320 family, A350 and 787. Those aircraft have the lowest fatal accident rates of any group, which is why a young type in this group starts from a favourable baseline in our methodology.

The weak point has been the engine, not the airframe. The A220 flies only with the Pratt & Whitney PW1500G geared turbofan. In 2019 several A220s had in-flight engine failures, and Swiss grounded its fleet for a few days for inspections. Regulators ordered checks of the low-pressure compressor. Later durability problems with the geared turbofan family meant long waits for engine overhauls, which hit airlines' schedules more than safety.

The fatal record

There is one fatal event in our data up to 7 October 2026:

• 23 December 2024, Swiss flight LX1885, Bucharest to Zürich. Over Austria the left engine failed and smoke filled the cockpit and cabin. The crew shut the engine down, diverted to Graz and evacuated everyone through four exits. One flight attendant collapsed shortly after putting on his smoke hood and died in hospital on 30 December. One of the 79 people on board died.

This event counts toward the score. Because only one of 79 people died, it adds a small amount under our severity measure, much less than a crash with no survivors would. Austrian investigators had not published a final report by our data cut-off, so we do not state a cause here.

How to tell if you are on one

Booking sites and flight apps such as Flightradar24 show the ICAO type code. The A220-100 appears as BCS1 and the A220-300 as BCS3, the Bombardier codes from the CSeries days. Some airlines still list it as "Airbus A220" and some as "Bombardier CS300", so look for either name.

If your flight is on an A220, the type is not a reason to change plans. Its fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary design is the same generation as the safest jets flying. Who operates it, and where, matters more than the airframe.