Garuda leases six Airbus A-33Os after 7-year delay
Garuda leases six Airbus A-33Os after 7-year delay
JAKARTA (JP): The state-owned airline company Garuda Indonesia
has finally signed a deal for the leasing of six Airbus A-330-300
aircraft, which were initially ordered 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.
Garuda said in a statement over the weekend that the deal was
signed in Singapore on Saturday by top executives of Garuda,
Airbus and Morgan Grenfell.
No information about the value of the deal was available.
Last April Garuda invited several international financing
firms to facilitate the leasing operation of the aircraft, after
revising all of its purchasing contracts into leasing schemes for
financial reasons.
In addition to the A-330-300 procurement plan, the company
last year announced it would buy just seven Boeing B-737-400 jets
even though it had agreed to buy 16, and also settled to buy only
two B-747-400s after sealing contracts to purchase nine.
A number of prominent firms took part in the six A-330-300 bid
which saw Morgan Grenfell, Chase Manhattan and HSBC of Hong Kong
as bidding participants.
Morgan Grenfell was named as the winner twice as the
government performed a "modified" tender. A planned signing of
the deal with Morgan Grenfell was canceled shortly before a
sealing schedule, due to widely-sent reports revealing that
Grenfell had offered a US$660-million proposal, which was not the
cheapest bid.
Analysts said at that time that Garuda, still suffering from
long-term financial problems, would be in a disadvantaged
position because the second bid should not have been performed as
the widely-sent reports were not valid. In the meantime, the
delayed bidding process forced Garuda to pay an expensive penalty
to Airbus.
Delivery
According to Garuda's statement, the first of the A-330-300
aircraft, powered by Trent 700 Rolls-Royce engines, will be
delivered in December this year and will be used on regional
routes, to destinations such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan,
Guangzhou and Australia,
Garuda currently operates a 60-aircraft fleet, including three
B-737-400s, six B-747-200s, 10 A-300-600s, nine Airbus A-300-B4s,
six MD-11s and six DC-10s, seven B-737-400s, eight B-737-300s and
five F-28s.
The statement said that Saturday's A-330-300 leasing agreement
involved Garuda's president Soepandi, Airbus' chief operating
officer Volker von Tein and Morgan Grenfell's chief executive for
the Asia-Pacific region Hans Beck.
Grenfell is the investment banking arm of Deutsche bank AG,
which cooperates with a consortium of leading international banks
in the A-330-300 leasing operation for Garuda.
Grenfell is also involved in the supply of 16 CN-235 aircraft
worth $147.2 million between Merpati Nusantara, a subsidiary of
Garuda, and the state-owned aircraft manufacturer PT IPTN.
Merpati and Morgan have agreed on a 10-year lease contract with a
fee of $70,000 per aircraft per month.
Airbus, a consortium of French Aerospatiale, German Daimler
Benz Aerospace, British Aerospace and Spanish CASA, started to
serve Garuda in 1979. (icn)
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