Dubai 2011: $2.7bn order bonanza for Airbus A320neo

Airbus enjoyed another order deluge for the A320neo yesterday, with a deal for 30 of the narrow-body airliners valued at $2.7 billion.

The order, from Aviation Capital Group (ACG), the US-based global leasing company, brings the total number of A320neo commitments to more than 1,300 since the programme was launched late last year.

Aviation Capital Group’s latest purchase means that the company has now signed-up for a total of 98 A320s.

This prompted ACG’s CEO and group MD, Stephen Hannahs, to say that he would have ordered another couple had he realised the numerical significance.

Damn it!” responded Airbus’s president and CEO Tom Enders, who was on hand to perform the signing ceremony despite Airbus’s information (and the contract) naming the Toulouse company’s COO customers, John Leahy. It is thought that Leahy may have been otherwise occupied in tough negotiations with Qatar Airways’ CEO Akbar Al Baker.

ACG’s relationship with Airbus began when it ordered 20 airliners from the A320 family in 2007 and, according to Hannahs, they proved so popular with the lessor’s customers that the initial order was soon increased to a total of 68 airframes, 85 of which (including yesterday’s order) are still on Airbus’s backlog.

Although ACG hasn’t yet announced an engine choice for its new A320neos, Hannahs expects there to be a “roughly even split” on the re-engined airliners between CFM’s LEAP-X and P&W’s PW1100G ‘Pure Power’.

“We will select the engines that our customers want nearer the time,” he said.

The airliners are scheduled to be delivered “late in this decade” said Hannahs, who also explained that while the financial crisis in the Euro zone would make access to capital “a rough road” for four to six months, he believed that it wouldn’t impact upon ACG’s business because its sources of finance – including the Export/Import Bank of America – were not directly affected.

Below: Airbus A320neo