Republic Airways Holdings, Inc., the parent company of Frontier and Midwest as well as 4 other regional airlines, has ordered 40 new Bombardier CSeries CS300 jets with options for another 40 as well. 

The CS300 will seat about 120 people in a mixed class layout and has enough range to fit current Frontier/Midwest needs especially if they select the CS300ER (about 2900 nautical miles range).  It’s an aircraft that really begins to infringe upon B737/A320 territory (especially the A318) and which promises very good efficiency, particularly for the kinds of missions Republic flies. 

These are most certainly for the branded Frontier/Midwest network.  They fit the missions that both of those brands are flying now and compliment the existing A319/A320 Frontier fleet as well as the EJets currently flying for both Frontier and Midwest.  The CSeries 2×3 Economy configuration has the potential offer a better product than many airlines offer with their larger aircraft since a passenger has just a 20% of getting a middle seat versus 33% chance on a 737/A320 aircraft. 

These aircraft will not fly for the regional airlines serving legacy airlines such as Delta, US Airways or United.  The unions for those airlines will never allow that kind of semi-mainliner aircraft fly on behalf of the legacies.  No doubt Republic look to re-allocate some of their EJets such as the E170 back over to such flying and this purchase gives them more flexibility in the future. 

This is  a big order for Republic Airways.  Nominally worth about $3Billion, Republic no doubt got significant discount for being the launch customer of this version (Lufthansa has already ordered the CS100) but it does make me wonder if they can afford the order right now since Republic has spent much of its cash holdings and it remains to be seen if legacy airlines are going to be happy about continuing contracts for regional service with an airline that is now competing with them on a mainline level.  Time will tell since these jets aren’t due to enter service until 2013 and there will likely be some delay added to that rough date.

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