Boeing, Airbus get big orders
jakarta — Indonesia’s Lion Air is buying 50 Boeing 737 Max 10 airplanes in a deal valued at about $6.2 billion, the firms said on Tuesday, as the carrier looks to cash in on a transport boom in the Southeast Asian nation.
The new single-aisle plane is the latest incarnation of Boeing’s 737 Max series, which can accommodate between 130 and 230 passengers and fly up to 3,850 nautical miles (7,130 kilometres), the companies said in a statement.
The order — the largest to date for the Max 10 — was valued at $6.24 billion, although multi-plane deals tend to end up costing carriers less than list prices.
The firms said the newest plane, which is to be delivered from 2020, “will be the most fuel-efficient and profitable single-aisle jet in the aviation industry”.
“We signed this deal because we’re anticipating a growing numbers of passengers in the coming years and so we can increase the amount of our national and international flights,” Lion’s president director Edward Sirait told AFP.
The low-cost carrier, which started less than 20 years ago with just one plane, stunned the sector in 2013 when it announced two of the world’s largest aircraft orders in a monster $46 billion deal.
At the time, Lion agreed to buy 234 medium-haul A320 jets worth some $23.8 billion from European aerospace giant Airbus, after a $22.4 billion deal for 230 Boeing planes.
SAS orders 50 Airbus A320-neos
Separately, SAS said on Tuesday it had ordered 50 Airbus A320-neos for its short and medium-haul routes, a sign of improving fortunes for the Scandinavian carrier after some difficult years.
Thirty-five of the planes will be bought directly from Airbus. They have a list price, before discounts agreed between SAS and Airbus, of just under $4 billion (3.2 billion euros), the airline said in a statement. The other 15 aircraft will be leased.
SAS already has 17 Airbus A320neos in service from a previous order for 30 Airbus A320neos. The new order means SAS will have at least 80 Airbus A320neos in service by 2023, SAS said.
The purchase will enable it to have a single-type fleet by 2023.
The leased planes will be delivered from the spring of 2019 through 2021, while the remaining 35 are scheduled to be delivered directly by Airbus by 2023.
In a bid to reduce costs, SAS has in recent years aimed to simplify its fleet. It now has two aircraft types in service within Europe, compared to six in 2012.
“In line with the deliveries of the new Airbus A320neos, SAS will begin phasing out its Boeing 737 and the existing Airbus A320 aircraft,” it said. The order also includes options for an additional five A320neos, the carrier said.