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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