Airbus Industrie records more orders
JAKARTA (JP): Airbus Industrie, a European consortium, booked orders for 124 planes during the first three months of this year, representing a 16 percent increase over the whole year of 1995, its press relations manager Sean Lee said yesterday.
In 1995, the consortium took orders for 106 planes, compared with the 125 planes booked in 1994, he said.
"Out of 124 aircraft ordered in the January-March period of this year, 30 were ordered by China," he said.
China early last month sealed a deal to acquire 30 A-320 passenger jets from Airbus. The US$1.77 billion package, including three confirmed orders of three A-340 jets, was made during a visit to France by Chinese Premier Li Peng.
Airbus, owned jointly by France's Aerospatiale and Germany's Daimler Benz Aerospace (each control 37.9 percent), British Aerospace (20 percent) and Spain's CASA (4.2 percent), was beaten out last year by its competitors, the American McDonnell Douglas and Boeing Co., for two big contracts. Instead of choosing Airbus airliners, the Scandinavian SAS airline decided early last year to buy 35 Boeing jets, while the U.S. company Valujet chose 50 McDonnell Douglas jets.
Lee yesterday said: "Though Airbus doesn't manufacture any 400-seat aircraft, the company currently has a 30 percent share of the world jet market."
The three leading jet manufacturers in the world are Airbus, McDonnell Douglas and Boeing Co.
Airbus manufactures twin-engine short-to-medium range single aisle aircraft such as the 124-seat A-319 jet, twin-engine medium-to-long range wide-body planes such as the 335-seat A-330- 300 jet, the twin engine long range wide-body A-330-200 jet and the four engine ultra-long range wide-body airplanes such as the 295-seat A-340-300 jet.
Airbus, which had a turnover of $9.6 billion in 1995, plans to develop an aircraft with a capacity of between 600 and 800 passengers after 2003.
Airbus recorded total sales of 2,024 firm orders from 123 customers worldwide at the end of March. There are currently 129 firms worldwide operating 1,362 Airbus jets.
Lee said yesterday that the final assembly of the first new generation A-330-300 twin-engine wide-body jet for flag carrier Garuda Indonesia is now underway in Toulouse, France, with delivery scheduled for next December.
Garuda signed in Singapore last month a deal for the leasing of six Airbus A-330-300 aircraft, which were initially ordered for procurement from the European consortium Airbus Industrie about seven years ago.
The aircraft are the first six of a batch of nine A-330-300s ordered by Garuda, which has chosen Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, a German leasing company, as the arranger of the lease.
Lee said that each A-330-300 aircraft is currently worth US$117 million.
Meanwhile, Airbus assistant to senior vice president of engineering, Gerard Guyot, said he has been appointed as an advisor at the state-owned aircraft assembler PT IPTN.
"I will be involved in the safety flight test of the N-250 aircraft. This is part of know-how transfer to IPTN," he said.(icn)