New Delhi: IndiGo announced Monday that it has placed an order of 500 aircraft with Airbus — the largest order by an airline in global aviation history, surpassing Air India’s order of 470 new aircraft placed in February this year.
“IndiGo…is further defining its long-term future, well into the next decade, by placing a firm order for 500 Airbus A320 Family aircraft. This will provide IndiGo a further steady stream of deliveries between 2030 and 2035,” the company, which is the biggest Indian airline by market share, said in a statement.
Indigo added that the order for 500 aircraft is not only its largest order but also the largest-ever single aircraft purchase by any airline with Airbus.
“The engine selection for this order will be done in due course and so will be the exact mix of A320 and A321 aircraft,” it said.
While the company did not announce the deal size, it is estimated to be $50 billion at list prices, according to industry estimates. The actual amount is likely to be much lesser as airlines tend to get significant discounts on bulk orders.
Presently, IndiGo operates over 300 aircraft and has previous orders totaling 480 aircraft which will be delivered by the end of this decade.
“With this additional firm order of 500 aircraft for 2030-2035, IndiGo’s order-book has almost 1,000 aircraft yet to be delivered well into the next decade,” the company said, adding that this new order will bring the strategic relationship between IndiGo and Airbus “to an unprecedented depth and breadth”.
The purchase agreement was signed Monday at the Paris Air Show 2023 in the presence of V. Sumantran, Chairman of the IndiGo Board, IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers, Guillaume Faury, CEO of Airbus, and Christian Scherer, Airbus’s Chief Commercial Officer and head of Airbus International.
IndiGo CEO Elbers said it is “difficult to overstate the significance of IndiGo’s new historic order for 500 Airbus A320 Family aircraft”.
“An order book now of almost 1.000 aircraft well into the next decade, enables IndiGo to fulfil its mission to continue to boost economic growth, social cohesion and mobility in India…This order strongly reaffirms IndiGo’s belief in the growth of India, in the A320 Family and in our strategic partnership with Airbus,” he added.
The company said it expects to welcome 100 million customers on board by the end of this year.
Rival airline Air India – owned by the Tata Group — had in February announced that it would buy 250 aircraft from Airbus and another 220 from US-based Boeing. While the airline did not disclose the deal value, it is estimated to be around $80 billion.
Meanwhile, in a report released Monday, research agency CRISIL Ratings said that the revenues of domestic maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services providers in the aviation sector are expected to triple from around Rs 1,800 crore currently to Rs 5,500-6,000 crore by fiscal 2028, driven by factors such as the expansion of airline fleets, favourable policies and ongoing investment in airports.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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