A day after grabbing the bigger slice of Air India’s record plane order, Airbus, the world’s biggest commercial aircraft making company, said it has enough business operations in India to continue with its expansion plans. However, there is no plan to have a new production aircraft assembly line in the country, for now, it added.
The Toulouse, France-headquartered company, which on February 14 bagged a total of 250 aircraft order comprising 140 A320neo, 70 A321neo single-aisle aircraft as well as 34 A350-1000 and six A350-900 wide-body jets, from Air India, has developed a series of business units in the country, which will be accelerated further.
At the annual press meet on Thursday, when asked if Airbus would look to have a production line in India, CEO Guillaume Faury said: “We don’t plan to build a production line in the coming years beyond the ones we are already building now. We are growing in India in many perspectives such as in areas like engineering, IT, digital, systems development, and growing our supplier base. We are accelerating in India big time.”
Airbus has a worldwide order book of 7,239 airplanes by the end of December 2022. It is hopeful of commencing deliveries of the first of the A350-900 to Air India in late 2023.
“We are building a C295 production line in India in a form of a major contract that we signed in partnership with the Tata group to serve the Indian Air force and that is a big task ahead of us. We have lots on the plate,” Faury added.
Airbus, which is yet to reach the delivery pre-pandemic schedules, said that while supply chain issues have eased in recent times, they, however, continue to impede smooth productions. The company recorded a 8.2% growth in deliveries 2022 to 661 aircraft from 611 aircraft delivered in 2021.
However, the new order intake surpassed deliveries. In 2022, the company saw a new order intake of 820 aircraft, a growth of 62% compared with 2021 when it received 507 new orders.