New Delhi: As budget carrier SpiceJet Ltd grapples with problems over its grounded 737 Max aircraft, it is looking to order at least 100 Airbus SE planes.
Till now, SpiceJet was a major global customer for the Max aircraft, but it says that it may buy a “sizable” number of Airbus A321LR and XLR jets to accommodate a planned expansion. SpiceJet Chairman Ajay Singh confirmed this Tuesday.
While, no firm decision has been made on the supplier, Singh said the airline would consider a competing midrange jetliner if Boeing decides to build one.
Airbus has “pushed us hard since the day we started flying Boeing aircraft, and of course with the current problems, they’ve pushed us harder,” Singh said in an interview in New York. “They have made us a commercial offer and we are evaluating it.”
The discussions with Airbus threaten Boeing with a high-profile defection at a time when the US aircraft maker is most troubled in its 103-year history. SpiceJet, India’s second-largest airline, has 13 Max jets already in its fleet and has committed to buy as many as 205 of the single-aisle workhorses as it expands capacity to handle the nation’s fast-growing demand for air travel.
While Singh didn’t specify the exact size of a potential transaction, he said “any aircraft order that SpiceJet places would at least be 100 aircraft.”
An order of that scale could exceed $10 billion based on 2018 sticker prices. Though official prices for the LR and XLR aren’t public, the two jets are longer variants of the A321 family of planes, the cheapest of which start at $118 million each.