The A220 for Breeze Airways surprised its visitors at the reveal last month, particularly with its large premium cabin up-front. The A220 sported 36 domestic first class style recliners, a huge volume compared to what's seen elsewhere. We spoke to David Neeleman about the reasons behind this, and he revealed his plan to switch out the aircraft's premium configuration depending on its mission.

Here comes the A220

The addition of the A220-300 to the Breeze fleet was a hotly anticipated event. While the airline began operations with a backbone fleet of Embraer regional jets, the plan was always to have one of the largest A220 fleets in the world.

In late October, Breeze Airways invited select guests to experience its first Airbus A220 for themselves. The aircraft looked resplendent in gleaming blue livery, but the real treat was on the inside, with a beautifully furnished interior.

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However, more than that, the biggest delight was at the front. To date, Breeze has been an affordable carrier, perhaps not rock bottom low-cost, but affordable nonetheless. That's why it was something of a surprise that, at the front of the A220, the airline had installed not a small premium cabin, but an enormous one.

Mr Neeleman's playland

In all, there were 36 premium seats, laid out in a 2–2 arrangement. That seems pretty big already, but the founder and CEO of Breeze Airways, David Neeleman, has bigger plans for this area of the cabin. Speaking exclusively to Simple Flying as part of the Future Flying Forum online event last year, Mr Neeleman described this area as his “playland. “ He told Simple Flying that:

"It's a new model. And we hope one day we'd have some lay flat seats up front, we can put about 20 to 21, lay flat seats in front of the exit row. So in front of the rows are our kind of our playland where we like to play and experiment for seasonality changes or whatever."

Indeed, the CEO of Breeze Airways has some adventurous plans for his so-called playland. First of all, he intends to place lie-flat seats in this area at some point, all of which he says will have direct aisle access. Furthermore, he also wants to outfit it with a quick change mechanism, allowing engineers to alter the layout dependent on the route and demand the flights will see. He adds:

"In front of the exit row, we have total flexibility. In a matter of days, we can go from 36 first class seats to no first class seats to domestic-style first class seats. We can have 36, 12 or zero premium seats in that cabin.

Neeleman further explained that the quick change functionality has been achieved by minimizing the amount of wiring onboard. Unlike JetBlue, Breeze will deliver IFE via passengers' own devices, which reduces the wiring to each seat and makes it far easier to reconfigure the cabin from one layout to another

Lie flat A220 seats

Premium seats on an Airbus A220 are not unheard of. The current largest operator of the A220, Delta Air Lines, does have a premium cabin for its domestic first class passengers. However, the furthest Delta has gone is to install three rows of recliner seats in a 2–2 configuration on both its – 100 and – 300 variants.

Lie-flat seats on an A220 have not been attempted as yet, but there are products out there that could fit this niche. JetBlue, a former Neeleman airline, has already set the bar for narrowbody lie-flat seating with its stunning new Mint cabin for transatlantic A321LRs, but the A220 is smaller, It will be interesting to see what Breeze comes up with, and Neeleman teased some details of the seating, saying:

"They'll all be direct aisle access seats. Well, I think there'll be a couple that aren't, that are kind of honeymoon seats where people want to sit together. But we'll have enough people traveling together that the direct aisle won't matter as much. It's going to take certification and it'll take a little bit of time, but I'm excited for that product, especially when we really go long-haul."

A flexible configuration

The fascinating element of this story is Neeleman's idea to have the cabin changeable depending on the service the aircraft is running. This, he believes, will allow him to redeploy the aircraft onto a variety of roots depending on demand.

For example, during the summer months when travel to Europe is popular, the A220 may well be flying transatlantic itself. For these services, a lie flat proposition is beneficial, as Breeze will be competing with many other full-service carriers with much larger aircraft. However, in the winter, the European appeal is lower.

As such, these aircraft can be repointed to warm destinations in the Caribbean and Mexico, for example, where a lie-flat proposition is not in such high demand. Scooting chilly Americans down to the warmth of the Caribbean can easily be done with a recliner up-front. There is also another option for configuring the aircraft.

The third possible cabin configuration is an all-economy layout, with which Neeleman could run a dense service at the very lowest cost on the routes where he sees quick and cheap as the priority. All in all, it’s a very astute move by the serial airline entrepreneur, and one which could be set to pay off in dividends.

In terms of where Breeze's A220 fleet is at at the moment, data from ch-aviation.com shows that it has received three A220-300s from an 80-aircraft order. Of these, N203BZ is listed as active, while N204BZ and N206BZ are said to be in storage. It will be fascinating to see this aspect of its fleet grow in years to come.

What do you make of Breeze's flexible A220 configuration? Have you flown with the airline since it started operations last year? Let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments!