Aiming at launching international services, all-business-class carrier Paramount Airways today placed a $1.5 billion order for acquiring 10 Airbus A-321 aircraft with each of them costing over $900 million.
Paramount signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the major European aircraft manufacturers on the sidelines of the ongoing Paris Airshow at Le Bourget in France.
Airbus is set to win contract to deliver six Airbus A-330 multi role tanker transports to the Indian Air Force in a deal worth estimated to be USD 1.3 billion.
Senior Defence Ministry officials confirmed that a 1-billion euro contract for six Airbus A-330 multi-role tanker-transports is close to being finalised. This despite the makers of the Russian IL-78 tanker, six of which the IAF has in service, offering a lower bid.
With the European aerospace industry looking at cutting costs, India can become an important outsourcing destination, an official of aircraft major Airbus Industries said here on Friday.
“Airbus is into cutting costs by outsourcing components. In future, we will outsource engineering as well as production jobs,” Martin Kraus, who heads Airbus A400 Military Systems, said here.
According to him, the challenges faced by Airbus in the civilian segment are increased competition from aircraft manufacturers in Brazil and China, low value of the American dollar and volatility in oil prices.
In the military segment, the defence budgets of European countries are coming down; Kraus said during his address at Connect 2008, an information, communication and technology meet organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
Indian aviation may be in the dumps currently with airlines cutting down on operations and passengers gravitating towards trains, but aircraft manufacturer Airbus continues to remain upbeat about its future in India. Not only is the European major expecting the next wave of orders from India’s airlines in three to four years’ time, it is also considering the country as one of the key centres for design and development of its long-haul A350 plane, set to take on rival Boeing’s much publicized 787 Dreamliner.
”As Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines look to compete in the international arena there is likely to be need for more aircraft. We expect that the next big wave of orders will come in 2011-12 by when these airlines will have completed the delivery of the aircraft already ordered. The airlines will need aircraft to continue on the growth path that they have embarked on. Besides, there will also be need for freighter aircraft,” Dr Kiran Rao, Executive Vice- President, Sales and Marketing, Airbus, said.
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India will be one of the key centres for design and development of the A350 aircraft, European aircraft manufacturer Airbus’ answer to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
Designing work for the A350 is the next project for the Airbus Engineering Centre India (AECI), the company’s high-tech aircraft component manufacturing facility in Bangalore, which started functioning in April last year.
“The A350 is the next big project for us. The engineers at the facility are currently working on the development of tools to design the aircraft,” said Kiran Rao, president, Airbus India.
“We will soon get the software for analysing the stress and strain on aeroplanes. We are working on the structural analysis of the aircraft among other things,” he added.
European aerospace major and also one of the world’s two biggest commercial aircraft manufacturers, Airbus has said that it would be ”definitely interested” in exploring production possibilities in India. ”It [manufacturing] is something we would consider. The question is should we consider manufacturing ourselves or should we look for partners who would do that,” chief executive officer and president, Airbus Industrie, Tom Enders, said.
In his interactions with the media at the ongoing Berlin ILA 2008 air show Enders said that going global without being present in India was impossible.
The European aircraft consortium, EADS, has said that it may start producing in India so as to be closer to its customers here. The Company Chairman, Mr Louis Gallois, told newspersons at the ongoing Berlin airshow that if EADS wanted to sell in India, it would also have to look at producing here.
The statement comes in the wake of Airbus maker, EADS participating in two ongoing Indian defence procurement programmes — the 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft being acquired by the Indian Air Force and 150 helicopters for the Indian Army.
The terms of both contracts specify that the eventual winner will be allowed to ship the first batch of aircraft from the supplier’s manufacturing base, but will eventually have to shift the manufacturing capability to India.
Airbus, however, continues to see India as a key market in terms of sales, research.
Airbus Industrie, Europe’s leading aircraft manufacturer, said it is expecting Indian airline companies to cancel or reschedule orders on account of their losses.
"No airline is making money in India because they are selling below cost. The country is seeing a 25 per cent annual growth rate in air passenger traffic but some slowdown is also expected. These are some of the pains when markets open up," said John Leahy, chief operating officer (customers), Airbus.
Leahy, however, declined to offer details.
Airbus has orders for five A380 aircraft from the Vijay Mallya-owned Kingfisher Airlines, which plans to start international flights shortly. It also has orders for eight A330 200 aircraft from Jet Airways, India’s biggest private airline.
European aviation giant Airbus on Tuesday announced more delays to the delivery of its giant A380 superjumbos, saying the current schedule was not one it could meet.
The company would be able to deliver 12 of the aircraft in 2008 instead of the 13 previously announced, and 21 in 2009 instead of the 25 it had earlier said it could manage, said a statement.
A review that led to the revised schedule did not cover financial costs, said the statement from parent company and aerospace giant EADS.
China’s new aerospace firm charged with building jumbo-jets will pose no threat to Airbus and Boeing for 20 years and will require the help of foreign technology, state press reported on Monday.
The launch of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China on Sunday has the backing of the top level of government, with Premier Wen Jiabao underscoring the need for the country to pursue independent innovation.
"China should by all means conduct overall design and final assembly of large aircraft by itself," the official Xinhua news agency quoted Wen as saying.
European plane maker Airbus is reviewing the delivery schedule of its A380 superjumbo jet, the company’s chief said on Tuesday following media reports that the programme might face new delays.
Airbus chief executive Thomas Enders did not exclude new delivery delays for the A380 airliner in comments distributed following an interview with Deutschlandfunk radio, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and the German press agency DPA.
In an English-language transcript of the interview sent by Airbus to AFP, Enders was asked if a press report of further delays to A380 deliveries was correct.
The aviation boom in India could soon move to the next level of aircraft production . With China managing to attract both Boeing and Airbus to set up manufacturing facilities there, India is now pulling all stops to make a beginning with the European major.
According to highly placed sources, the government is of the view that offset (benefit from a deal) arising out of purchases from European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) can be used for putting up assembly units for medium size civil transport aircraft. A beginning could be made with up to 70-seater ATRs.
‘‘ This can be done under licence of the original manufacturer by either a government agency or a venture with private players,’’ said sources.
National carrier Air India might place an order for 10 superjumbo A380s this year. “A deal with Air India could come sometime this year,” Airbus COO John Leahy has been quoted in reports from the ongoing Singapore Air Show.
The order could be around $3 billion, based on the list price of the aircraft. But, the negotiated price may vary.
Air India spokesperson Jitendra Bhargava refused to confirm the development. “We will talk about it when the plans have firmed up,” he said.
According to Airbus sources close to the development, “Airbus has already made its presentation to Air India and also to the ministry. Whenever they are ready and instruct us to put in the bid, we will do so.”
Airbus is flying high in 2008 signing orders for 238 aircraft in the first month. It has also delivered 37 aircraft in January, including Singapore Airlines’ second super jumbo A380.
The largest order signed in the month was for 110 A320s, ordered by China Aviation Supplies Import and Export Group last fall. It is part of the orders that were announced last year but signed only in January this year.
An Airbus A380, the world’s largest passenger jet, became the first commercial plane to be powered by alternative fuel on a test flight on Friday, the planemaker said.
The superjumbo took off from Filton, England on a three-hour test flight to Airbus’ headquarters in Toulouse, France, powered on a blend of regular fuel and liquid fuel processed from gas.
Airbus held onto its rank as the world’s biggest planemaker, beating Boeing in 2007 deliveries and narrowing the gap in orders. Airbus, based in France, sold 453 aircraft, 19 more than the year before and 12 more than Boeing, CEO Tom Enders said on Wednesday. Net orders totalled 1,341, the most in the company’s 38-year history, compared with 1,413 for Boeing.
Mr Enders said Airbus aims to deliver more than 470 planes this year. That may put it behind Boeing for the first time since 2003 unless delays to the 787 Dreamliner prompt the US company to slow production. Airbus will still suffer a loss for 2007 when parent European Aeronautic, Defence & Space posts results in March, hurt by costs from delays to the A380 superjumbo and the A400M military transport.
Expectedly, Airbus said Wednesday that it had won record aircraft orders last year, but also, unsurprisingly, it lagged its US rival Boeing for the second successive year in a row.
The European aircraft maker, a subsidiary of EADS, the Franco-German aerospace and defence group, said Wednesday that it had won 1,341 net new orders, after cancellations and conversions by customers from one aircraft type to another. This marks a 70 per cent increase from the 790 units sold in 2006 and also well ahead of its previous record of 1,055 units sold in 2005.
Airbus stepped up its legal battle with Boeing at the World Trade Organisation, alleging that defence subsidy programmes and promotion campaigns in countries such as India contributed adversely to its sales in third country markets, a senior EU official said.
“We have established that Boeing received subsidies to the tune of $10.4 billion from eight specific NASA programmes for the development of new technologies that are currently being used by Boeing,” the EU official said, suggesting that this helped the American company to enormously in the race to capture markets world over.
In addition, Boeing benefited enormously from the US Department of Defence subsidies for dual-use technologies that are used in both military and civil aircraft industries, the official added.
Jet Airways India Ltd, the country’s top private carrier, said on Tuesday it had exercised an option to buy five additional Airbus A330-200 aircraft, as it replaces its fleet and adds new routes.
Bangalore-based Rs 500 crore Dynamatic Technologies Ltd has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Spirit AeroSystems (Europe) Ltd, the European division of Spirit AeroSystems, Inc., a supplier of commercial airplane assemblies and components to provide complex metallic precision assembly for Airbus single aisle (A320 family) aircraft.
Said Udayant Malhoutra, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Dynamatic Technologies Ltd, “We are delighted to have a collaboration with Spirit for production of exacting aerostructures for Airbus. This, on top of our prior learnings from Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) is a major win for the Indian Aerospace industry. We hope to emerge as the single source supplier to Airbus over the next 20 months.”
Manufacturing is due to commence in the third quarter of 2008 at a greenfield facility spread over 45,000 sq.ft area being built at Dynamatics Park in Peenya on the outskirts of Bangalore with full production rates being targetted for 2010.
