Monaco: AirAsia, which smashed order records for Airbus jets to become Asia's largest budget carrier, could buy another 50 planes as it targets aggressive expansion in India, Chief Executive Tony Fernandes said.
Discussion of an order for another 50 A320-family jets, worth $5 billion at list prices, comes weeks ahead of the Paris air show and five months after the Malaysian carrier added 100 jets to its order book to lift total purchases to 475 planes.
AirAsia plans to launch an airline in India in partnership with the Tata Group to cash in on rising demand for domestic air travel among India's expanding middle class. It would start with planes already on order but potentially trigger new orders.
"We're looking at putting in almost a plane every month. We decided that sometimes when we pussyfoot around it takes too long to catch up so we decided just to go for it," Fernandes told Reuters in an interview.
"We've bought a lot of planes but we're still short, we're still leasing planes at the moment, so I was right buying these planes, and we may have to put in another order...(for) 50 or something like that," Fernandes said.
25/05/13 Reuters/Economic Times
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Discussion of an order for another 50 A320-family jets, worth $5 billion at list prices, comes weeks ahead of the Paris air show and five months after the Malaysian carrier added 100 jets to its order book to lift total purchases to 475 planes.
AirAsia plans to launch an airline in India in partnership with the Tata Group to cash in on rising demand for domestic air travel among India's expanding middle class. It would start with planes already on order but potentially trigger new orders.
"We're looking at putting in almost a plane every month. We decided that sometimes when we pussyfoot around it takes too long to catch up so we decided just to go for it," Fernandes told Reuters in an interview.
"We've bought a lot of planes but we're still short, we're still leasing planes at the moment, so I was right buying these planes, and we may have to put in another order...(for) 50 or something like that," Fernandes said.
25/05/13 Reuters/Economic Times
