Air India will order nearly 500 aircraft, says the aircraft leasing company

Dublin:

One of the world’s leading aircraft leasing companies said on Monday that Air India is set to order around 500 aircraft as the aviation industry continues to recover in the wake of the pandemic.

“As a result of that recovery, there is now more momentum for large orders from airlines that have kind of sat down and watched the movie, and now they see that there will be a positive trend,” Stephen Udvar-Hazy, CEO and President of AirLease Corp., said at the Aviation Economics conference.

“We have an order of 500 aircraft coming from India, which will be about 400 narrow-body aircraft, possibly a mix of (Airbus) A320neos, A321neos and (Boeing) 737 MAXs, and 100 wide-body which will include (Boeing) 787s, 777X, and potentially There will be about 777 freighters and (Airbus) A350s.”

The comments are the first public indication of the size of the planned order after Reuters reported in December that Air India was close to ordering up to 500 aircraft as it is making a renaissance under the Tata Group conglomerate.

Industry sources say completion of the proposed deal depends on ongoing negotiations with the engine makers.

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. Last year, China placed an order for Airbus aircraft.

“We expect a number of airlines to place significant orders and again most of these orders will be for replacements,” said Udvar-Hazy.

He predicted that airlines would increasingly turn to medium-sized, wide-body jets after significant delays in development of Boeing’s new largest model, the 400-seat 777X — which is currently in operation for five years and likely to rise further.

“We expect that both OEMs will come under pressure in the next couple of years to increase production rates, not necessarily back to the levels they were in 2018, but certainly much higher than current production.”

(Except for the headline, this story was not edited by the NDTV staff and was published from a syndicated feed.)