Qatar plans firm $16bn order for Airbus A350s
HO CHI MINH CITY: Qatar Airways plans to sign a firm order for 80 Airbus A350 XWB long-range planes worth $16bn, dropping a threat to buy Boeing Dreamliners, after the European aircraft manufacturer came up with a wider body and new wing for its jet.
“We have got what we want from them,” Akbar al-Baker, chief executive of the airline, said yesterday in Ho Chi Minh City. He said he expected to sign a firm order at the Paris Air Show in June and a preliminary agreement in weeks.
Al-Baker threatened to buy Boeing’s rival 787 Dreamliner on February 27 unless Airbus came up with a detailed redesign of the A350 by June.
Qatar was the first or the “launch” customer for the plane at the Paris show in 2005. Airbus has reworked the aircraft several times as airlines chose Boeing’s new plane.
“We persuaded Airbus that the 350 that they had previously launched was inadequate,” al-Baker said in Vietnam. “The only thing it had was a new engine.”
A letter of intent will come within “one week, 10 days, two weeks,” he said. Qatar is beginning service from Doha to Vietnam.
Boeing’s 787, which enters service in 2008, will be 50% built from composite materials, which are lighter than the traditional aluminum and make the plane more fuel-efficient.
Airbus’ A350 XWB is now to be 50% built from composite materials as well, though design delays mean it won’t enter service until 2013.
Airbus, a unit of European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co (Eads), said in January it expects to spend about 11.6bn euros ($15.4bn) developing the A350 XWB, 50% more than the earlier version, as the composite materials add to costs.
The only firm order for the A350 XWB has been an 11-plane contract from Finnair, Finland’s state-controlled carrier, signed March 8.
Boeing has firm orders from 38 customers for 490 of the 787s.
Singapore Airlines agreed to buy 20 A350 XWBs last June, with options to buy 20 more, though hasn’t yet signed a firm order.
On March 22, Airbus also won a pledge from Russia’s Aeroflot to buy 22 A350s worth $4.4bn, with Airbus offering Russian industry a 5% stake in building the aircraft.
Aeroflot, eastern Europe’s largest airline, signed a preliminary agreement March 22.
Emirates, the largest Arab airline, is weighing a choice between buying as many as 100 A350s or 787s. President Tim Clark said on Monday in an interview that he would visit Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, next week to get more information on the A350.
Clark said Emirates still didn’t know enough about the plane to make a decision on whether to buy it.
Qatar Airways operates an all-Airbus fleet of 56 planes, to be 57 by the end of this week, to 71 destinations. The airline plans to start flights from Doha to cities in the US, Asia, Africa and Europe this year.
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