Air Nostrum Shifts Wet-Lease Work To CityJet Post-Merger

AARHUS, Denmark—Spanish regional airline Air Nostrum has handed its wet-lease flying to its new sister airline CityJet, as the two companies begin to roll out their post-merger integration.

During the 2018 Farnborough Air Show, Air Nostrum and CityJet announced plans to come together under a new holding company, Strategic Alliance of Regional Airlines (SARA), creating Europe’s largest regional airline group. The deal fell by the wayside while both airlines went through pandemic-related restructuring, but they regained European Union competition clearance in March 2023 and are now implementing their partnership.

Speaking on the sidelines of Routes Europe in Aarhus, Demark, Air Nostrum's Miguel Oliver, the carrier's network planning and scheduling director, said discussions are now underway over the group’s future fleet plan.

This will be influenced by the two airlines’ different business models. CityJet was created as a scheduled airline in 1993, but has not flown under its own brand since 2018. Instead, CityJet now wet leases CRJ900s and CRJ1000s to Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and Lufthansa. Conversely, Air Nostrum operates scheduled services under an Iberia franchise agreement, using a fleet of 11 ATRs, four CRJ200s and 28 CRJ1000s.

In the past, Air Nostrum performed some additional wet-lease work for airlines like Binter Canarias, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa and SAS. Air Nostrum’s most recent contract was three aircraft placed with Italian carrier ITA Airways, but this contract ended in March. CityJet has since taken on these aircraft and redeployed them with Lufthansa.

With SAS’s move to SkyTeam, SARA’s revenue streams will span all three alliances, because Lufthansa belongs to Star Alliance and Iberia is a Oneworld member airline. 

Work has also begun on Air Nostrum’s fleet plan for 2028-2030, which will involve additional used ATR 72-600s and CRJ1000s.

Oliver is willing to consider any available aircraft of these two types, but CRJ1000s can be hard to find because AirNostrum/SARA is already the biggest CRJ1000 operator worldwide. 

The additional CRJ1000s will pave the way for the phase-out of Air Nostrum’s four CRJ200s, which is scheduled for next year.