Aeroflot Director General Valery Okulov has picked the supplier of long-range jets to the liking of the company's state shareholder.
Photo: Dmitry Lekay
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Airbus Wins Aeroflot’s Long-Range Jet Tender
Aeroflot has decided to buy new long-range planes from Airbus, leaving Boeing behind. The Russian airline will soon sign contracts with the European company to buy 22 A350s and lease 10 A330s, the latter to be used before the A350s are supplied. The purchase deal alone is worth $2 billion. Industry experts say that the choice is mostly likely to be endorsed by the company’s state co-owners, but Aeroflot will not be able to diversify its fleet with Boeing 787 jets.
The airline will sign a contract with Airbus to purchase 22 A350 long-range planes, Aeroflot’s director general Valery Okulov told a news conference on Thursday. Talks with Boeing on the supply of Boeing 787s have been frozen. The deal is to become the largest in the Russian aircraft industry as the purchase will amount to $2-3 billion.
The tender to supply Aeroflot with long-range jets was announced in July 2005. At the end of 2006, Russian federal authorities, which own 51 percent in Aeroflot, refused to support the management’s choice of Boeing 787 jets in a more lucrative deal. Experts said the decision came as a consequence of faltering Russian-U.S. relations.
Sergey Koltovich, head of the fleet development department at Aeroflot, told Kommersant that there are two contracts to be signed. First, the company will close a leasing deal for ten A330-200 jets for the period from eight to ten years. The first A330 will arrive in late 2008, Valery Okulov said. The jets will be used to meet the shortage of long-range planes in the company. In the second contract, Aeroflot will agree to buy from Airbus 22 A350 extra wide-body aircrafts. The first supply is due in 2015. A Kommersant source in the company reports that the contracts will be signed within two or three months.
Aeroflot’s board is expected to consider the two deals on March 26.
Experts note that political interest played the decisive role in the decision. Striking the deal, Aeroflot is losing a chance to diversity its fleet with Boeings like major international airlines do.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 16, 2007
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