Kingfisher to buy 50 Airbus aircraft

Paris: Despite teething troubles with the Super Jumbo which cost the European consortium $5 billion in losses and forced it into massive job lay-offs, Airbus is back and to a large extent because of Vijay Mallya.
Mallya, who has a controlling stake in Air Deccan besides his own Kingfisher airlines, has decided to buy a staggering 50 Airbus jets for everything from short haul to ultra long range flights.
Mallya, with Kingfisher and Air Deccan, will now have a total of 176 aircraft on order from airbus, making it one of the largest airbus customers in the world.
Once the deal goes through, it's value would be $7 billion.
For the consumer in India, it's a win-win situation with more flight options abroad and more in India, not just from airlines such as Kingfisher but also from the national carrier Air India, which has already placed orders from both Boeing and Airbus.
Last year Boeing had wrested the title of biggest-selling plane maker from Airbus for the first time since 2000 with a record 1,044 firm orders against 790 for Airbus.
Now, after a stunning week at the Paris Air show, it's traditional home-turf, Airbus -which depends heavily on companies such as Kingfisher - is once again ahead of its American rival with more than 600 firm orders, nearly a 100 ahead of Boeing.
24/06/07 Noopur Tiwari/NDTV.com

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Categories: Airshow Paris 2007, Foreign Jun 2007, Kingfisher Jun 2007