The Irish airline Cityjet has flown the first of five Bombardier CRJ-1000s. This bears the registration EI-HIC and was transferred to Munich a few days ago. From this airport you fly as part of a wet lease order for Lufthansa Cityline.

The aircraft leased from Regional One is 11,5 years old and was formerly in service with Air France Hop. It was most recently located in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in what is known as long-time storage. Cityjet will soon take delivery of two more CRJ-1000s. These are the machines with serial numbers 19024 and 19006, which currently have the temporary registrations OE-LIL and OE-LIZ. In Maastricht, the Netherlands, the two regional jets are being prepared for use by the company specializing in ACMI and charter flights.

Cityjet uses Bombardier CRJ-1000 for the first time. Lufthansa Cityline is for this type of aircraft the first ACMI customer. So far, the smaller CRJ-900 have mainly been used. In the past they also had machines like BAe 146 and Sukhoi Superjet in operation. They were not satisfied with the Russian-made machines due to the complicated supply of spare parts and returned them to the lessor. Brussels Airlines had previously threatened to terminate the wet lease agreement because the superjets often had long AOG times. Cityjet reacted to this and then flew CRJ-900s for the Belgian Lufthansa subsidiary.

A few years ago, Air Nostrum and Cityjet wanted to merge. For various reasons, the project has been quiet for a long time. Earlier this year, the two airlines announced that intends to implement the merger soon. The EU Commission already has green light for the project. It is currently planned that the two airlines should be placed under a joint holding company.