By Anne Kauranen
HELSINKI, March 23 (Reuters) - Finnair said on Monday it will renew its European fleet with an order for 18 E195-E2 narrow-body aircraft from Brazilian manufacturer Embraer, moving away from its current provider Airbus.
Finnair's choice deals a further blow to France's Airbus, after the Brazilian Embraer's E2 outsold Airbus A220 three to one last year. Finnair said it also plans to acquire up to 12 Airbus A320 or A321 from the used aircraft market.
"This is a highly versatile aircraft
and one of the quietest on the market," Chief Executive Turkka Kuusisto told Reuters.
"It will reduce our COâ‚‚ emissions by 30 percent per passenger carried. In addition to enabling us to operate efficiently within Finland and widely across Europe, it also supports our climate objectives," he added.
The Embraer order includes options for 16 additional aircraft and purchase rights for a further 12, Finnair said, adding it had signed deals with RTX's Pratt & Whitney for spare engines and maintenance services.
The airline, majority-owned by the Finnish state, has navigated years of upheaval, first from the COVID-19 pandemic and, since 2022, from the mutual airspace closures between Russia and EU countries following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Embraer has benefited from a global boom in demand for regional jets as airlines catch up with fleet replacements set aside during the pandemic, the planemaker's CEO Arjan Meijer told Reuters in January.
Finnair last year said it urgently needed to replace 15 older models from its narrow-body fleet of 29 Airbus planes and added more new jets might be bought to meet growing demand.
(Reporting by Anne Kauranen in Helsinki and Tim Hepher in Paris, editing by Stine Jacobsen)
