IndiGo pits Boeing against Airbus in record jet order talks
Indian budget carrier IndiGo is in talks with both Boeing and its current supplier Airbus to order more than 500 passenger jets, potentially smashing an industry record set by domestic rival Air India a few weeks ago, industry sources said.
India’s largest airline has until now been an exclusive buyer of narrow-body jets from Airbus and French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said last month that IndiGo was close to ordering several hundred planes from the European planemaker.
But negotiations to keep renewing the budget carrier’s fleet from the end of the decade have also broadened to include mid-sized wide-body jets, sparking a contest between Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner and the upgraded Airbus A330neo, the sources said.
→ Air India orders up to 290 Boeing and 250 Airbus aircraft
IndiGo, owned by InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, is also comparing the A320neo with the Boeing 737 MAX as it weighs a major new order for narrow-body jets, they added.
An IndiGo representative told Reuters the airline is constantly in talks with manufacturers as it plans its next phase of growth. “However, we haven’t finalised anything till now.”
IndiGo, which counts a 55% share of the domestic market, is widely expected to maintain Airbus as its supplier of narrow-body jets to squeeze out further economies of scale.
It is already one of Airbus’s largest customers and has so far ordered a total of 830 Airbus A320-family jets of which 488 are still to be delivered.
But Indian analysts say Airbus will face a tougher fight for the wide-body order. In a departure from its single-aisle strategy, IndiGo last month began international operations with a Boeing 777, its first wide-body aircraft, taken from codeshare partner Turkish Airlines, which provides the pilots.
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