ITA Airways' first A321neo pops out of Airbus hangar: where and when it will enter service

It has finished painting operations at the Airbus factory in Hamburg, the first A321neo that will join the ITA Airways fleet. The plane sports Savoie blue livery and bears the name of Massimo Rosolino, the Italian swimmer who was Olympic champion at Sydney 2000.

This is the fourth latest generation aircraft purchased by ITA, following the A350-900, A220-300 and A330-900. As of Dec. 1, it will join a fleet of 79 airplanes.

The company's timetable still gives today, as announced a few weeks ago, The debut of the A321neo on the Rome-Tel Aviv route. The plane, in particular, would go to operate the second flight of the day from Fiumicino, AZ812 taking off from the Roman airport at 4:10 p.m. and landed at Ben Gurion at 8:30 p.m., then left Israel at 9:15 a.m. the next morning and landed in Rome at 12 noon (AZ815).

However, the continuation of the war between Israel and Palestine remains to be seen. If hostilities have not ceased, the debut of the A321neo will evidently take place on another route. Beginning in the spring, then, with the arrival of additional units (the company has ordered a total of one), ITA will deploy the aircraft to its new destinations in the Middle East and Africa: from May 2024 it will fly to Riyadh, from June to Accra (in Ghana) and Kuwait City, from July to the Senegalese capital Dakar, and from October to Jeddah.

The Italian carrier preferred the -NX version to the -LR version. (long-haul), which has significantly lower purchase and leasing costs and can operate on medium-haul routes (up to 6 hours), but not on long-haul, so it will not be possible to fly from Milan to New York as Jetblue does every day which connects London, Paris and Amsterdam with the U.S. East Coast by A321.

Inside, however, the plane was configured in three cabins and classes of service exactly like ITA's long-range aircraft.

At the front is a Business Class cabin with 12 seats that can be converted into beds. Behind it will be a Premium Economy also with 12 seats and with a space between rows of seats of 38 inches. Finally, behind it will be 141 Economy seats (for a total of 165 seats on an airplane that can normally accommodate more than 200. ITA will thus become the second airline in Europe (next to Scandinavia's SAS) to operate A321neo in as many as three classes of service With lie-flat seats in Business.

Distinctive features of the new A321neo include the Airspace Cabin, new ITA Airways custom interior lighting and XL overhead bins. In addition, each seat is equipped with the latest generation "on-demand" video and audio entertainment system, 17.3'' (Business), 15.6'' (Premium Economy) and 13.3'' (Economy) low-reflectivity, 4K resolution touch-screen.

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