Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dublin:
Air India will order around 500 planes as the airline industry recovers from the pandemic, one of the world’s top aircraft rental companies said on Monday.
“As a result of this recovery, there is now more momentum for large orders from airlines that have kind of sat back and seen the film and now they see that there will be a positive trend,” said Steven Udvar-Hazy, executive chairman of AirLease Corp said the Airline Economics Conference.
“We have this 500-plane order from India, which will be about 400 narrow-body planes, probably a mix of (Airbus) A320neos, A321neos and (Boeing) 737 MAXs, and 100 wide-body planes, including (Boeing) 787, 777X, possibly some 777 Freighter and (Airbus) A350.”
The comments are the first public indication of the scale of the planned order, after Portal reported in December that Air India was on the verge of ordering up to 500 jets as it enjoys a renaissance under the Tata Group conglomerate.
Industry sources say the completion of the proposed deal is dependent on ongoing negotiations with the engine manufacturers.
Air India did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Airbus and Boeing had no immediate comment.
United Airlines recently ordered 200 large and small aircraft. China placed a block order for Airbus jets last year.
“We expect a number of airlines to place bulk orders and again most of those orders will be replacement orders,” Udvar-Hazy said.
He predicted that airlines would increasingly turn back to mid-size widebody jets after significant delays in the development of Boeing’s biggest new model, the 400-seat 777X, which is currently running for five years and may continue to grow.
“We anticipate that both OEMs will be under pressure to ramp up production rates over the next few years, not necessarily back to 2018 levels, but certainly well beyond current production.”
(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by NDTV staff and was published by a syndicated feed.)
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