Airbus, Jazeera Airways seal $3.3-bn aircraft deal

Dubai, November 16

Airbus raked in more orders at the Dubai Air Show on Tuesday, reaching one valued over $3.3 billion to sell 28 new aircraft to Kuwait’s Jazeera Airways.

The European plane maker’s agreement includes 20 single-aisle A320neos and eight A321neos, which competes directly with Boeing’s 737 Max, along with an option to sell another five planes to the low-cost, fast-growing airline.

While the executives described the deal as a memorandum of understanding rather than a firm order, Rohit Ramachandran, CEO of Jazeera Airways, said he considered the handshake “to far exceed any immediate formal collateral” behind the agreement.

“There’s a great level of trust to which honestly one could ascribe a significant dollar value,” said Ramachandran, calling it a “realistic, modest” order. The executives said the first planes should be delivered in 2026.

The Kuwait-based Jazeera Airways, an upstart Middle East discount carrier, was founded in 2004 as one of the first non-government owned airlines in the Persian Gulf while demand and competition for low-cost travel intensified in the region.

In its fourth deal of the show, Airbus said it received an order of 10 narrow-body A220 jets from Nigeria’s Ibom Air, a new carrier owned by the oil-rich southeast state of Akwa Ibom.

The deal, based on the plane maker’s pre-pandemic price list, is valued at some $810 million, though large aircraft purchases are typically deeply discounted. Executives declined to say how much they were paying for the planes.

The frenetic trade show in Dubai typically sees a stream of order and product announcements.

But this year’s exhibition, in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic that triggered the aviation industry’s worst-ever crisis, has been more subdued than in the past.

Most deals so far have involved small aircraft as opposed to the trademark wide-bodies that ply the long-haul routes of Gulf Arab carriers.