Airbus maintains narrowbody lead and is back in the widebody game with Air India order

Airbus was first off the blocks when it was time to announce the Air India order on Valentine’s day. Representative image (Source: Reuters)

Airbus was first off the blocks when it was time to announce the Air India order on Valentine’s day. The announcement talked about 250 firm orders comprising 140 A320neo, 70 A321neo, six A350-900 and 34 A350-1000 planes. This is in addition to the handful of A320neo aircraft joining the fleet starting this quarter.

With this order, Airbus has protected its turf and made inroads into the widebody market in India. When initial reports about negotiations for this deal started trickling in, Boeing was sitting on a huge inventory of the MAX and was in a position to sell the planes at a discount and offer them much earlier than Airbus could. Airbus has its slots for the A320 family booked for a long period.

What do the numbers say?

Airbus commands over two-thirds of the market in India in the civil aviation space — 84% of all narrowbody aircraft in India are from Airbus. When it comes to widebody aircraft, Airbus has none. It is not that airlines in India have not operated Airbus widebodies — Jet Airways had 10 A330s and Kingfisher airlines had five; Air India has operated A330s and Indian Airlines operated the A300/A310. But since 2019, when Jet Airways went down, Airbus has that slate empty with all 48 widebody aircraft currently registered in India being Boeing planes.

Between Air India, AirAsia India and Vistara, the group’s aviation arm operates 140+ A320 family aircraft. Of these, 79 are A320neo family aircraft, while the rest are A320ceo, which will be up for replacement. Over time, the airline group will do away with the A319 and the A320neo will be the smallest aircraft in the fleet.

What do the numbers translate into?

Airbus promises a saving of up to 15 percent with the A320neo family over the older A320ceo. Over a period of time, the group will look at replacing the ‘ceo’ with the ‘neo’. The addition of the A321neo shows airlines’ intention to grow in the neighbourhood and add metro frequencies. Will the A321neo be further split into the LR and XLR? Airbus gives a lot of flexibility to its customers and the airline will have some time at hand to make that decision.

The real reason for celebrations at Airbus is the selection of the A350XWB, which helps it break into the widebody market dominated by Boeing. The A350XWB flies longer than the B787 Dreamliner and has a larger capacity, something that compares well with the B777, which Air India currently flies but is a step lower in capacity than the 777-9, which is not yet certified.

The Rolls-Royce powered aircraft is setting new benchmarks for inflight comfort in terms of noise, besides giving the ability to the airlines to use IoT (Internet of Things), among other things, to improve passenger comfort and ease of service for the crew.

Forty aircraft seems like a large number in a country where the current count of widebody planes is 48, which makes one wonder why so many. This is a clear indicator of where the expansion is being planned. The airline has restarted its expansion in Mumbai, having vacated it in favour of Delhi just before 2010. In addition, the Bengaluru expansion has also started.

The airline could look at airports in North America being connected by both Delhi and Mumbai. That would mean services to Toronto, Vancouver and possibly Montreal in Canada, and additional services to all points in the US where the airline operates, including New York, Newark, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, before looking at other destinations in the US. Both the US and Canada have open skies with India, making the addition seamless.

The A350 will become the flagship of the airline in terms of product as well as routes and this definitely is music to the ears of Airbus.