Irish lessor Avolon orders 100 Airbus A321neo and wants to buy 40 Boeing 737 MAX

2023-12-12 22:27:38

Champagne! Irish lessor Avolon has placed a firm order for 100 additional Airbus A321 neos and announced its intention to order 40 Boeing 737 MAXs, the two aircraft manufacturers announced on Tuesday. According to the latest list price communicated by Airbus, the transaction would be close to $13 billion. The value of the 40 copies of the 737-8 that the lessor also intends to acquire would amount to 4.8 billion dollars at list price.

The order from Airbus brings the number of A321s on order in Avolon’s backlog to 190 and 292 for the entire A320 family (A319, A320 and A321). It “testifies to Avolon’s desire to secure available delivery slots in the long term. “In this way, Avolon and its customers can benefit from the strong wave of growth and replacements observed globally in all markets,” according to Christian Scherer, commercial director of Airbus, quoted in the press release.

Airbus still in competition with Boeing

With 6,739 A320 range aircraft in its order book at the end of November, Airbus sees its production assured until the end of the decade. Slots available for new customers are becoming rare despite the ramp-up in production. The aircraft manufacturer must go from 40 A320s produced per month in 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, to 75 per month in 2026. The A321, the largest aircraft in the A320 family, can carry 220 passengers over 7,400 kilometers.

With Boeing, the order for 40 MAX-8s is subject to the approval of Avolon’s main shareholder, Bohai Leasing, and is therefore at this stage only a letter of intent, Boeing explains in a separate press release. “Today’s order reflects our continued optimism about the outlook for the aviation sector and strengthens our ability to meet customer needs for delivery windows through 2030, when aircraft availability is very limited “, according to Andy Cronin, CEO of Avolon.

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Boeing also has a full order book for its 737 MAX, with 4,572 aircraft of this type to be delivered at the end of October. The Boeing MAX-8 can carry 178 passengers over 6,570 kilometers.