Boeing announced an order for 75 of its 737 single-aisle airliners with a list price of about $8 billion from Jet Airways India, ending a sales drought at the biennial Dubai Air Show.
The order, which was already on Boeing’s books with the buyer listed as undisclosed, is comprised entirely of re-engined Max8 variants, Mumbai-based Jet said at a press conference with Boeing at the Gulf expo Monday.
The announcement created some momentum at the Dubai show, which on its first day Sunday saw only a single order for two Boeing 777 freighters from Etihad Airways. That contrasts with the $179 billion in combined transactions for the U.S. company and rival Airbus Group SE at the 2013 show.
Jet Airways is adding aircraft as competition steps up in the fast-expanding Indian air travel market, where it’s seeking to take on no-frills carriers like SpiceJet and market leader IndiGo. The carrier has said it might not make money until 2017, after failing to post a full-year profit since 2008, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Jet sold a 24 percent stake to Etihad Airways in 2013, the first Indian carrier to tie up with a foreign airline after the government relaxed rules. The deal revealed in Dubai saw it convert 25 orders for current-generation 737s to the Max version. The 50 other aircraft were already for the re-engined type.
“Some aircraft will go, be phased out, and new ones will come,” founder Naresh Goyal said at the press conference. “Over a period we will have all Max.”
Planemakers and airlines signaled that they expect relatively few further deals at this week’s expo as the industry pauses to digest a record haul of new planes. The show also lacks a new, buzz-building offering like Boeing’s upgraded 777X that was introduced with an order rush two years ago.
“The bar was raised in 2013,” said Tim Clark, president of Dubai-based Emirates, the world’s biggest long-haul carrier, which snapped up 50 Airbus A380 superjumbos two years ago. “There was serious money spent.”
As it stands, Boeing’s backlog of planes goes out eight years into the future, while Airbus’s stretches out for a decade.
Some airlines have also raised the specter of an oversupply of planes. Delta Air Lines Chief Executive Officer Richard Anderson last month said there was a surge of wide-body models coming off lease, creating investor concern that planemakers might face pressure on pricing for new aircraft.
Airbus’s sales chief, John Leahy, said the general trend of business is what needs to be watched, rather than whether one air-show crop matches a previous one.
“The important thing is that orders cycle as they do, some years are very strong others years aren’t quite as strong,” he said. “As long as you have a book to build of positive one, things are going in the right direction.” Airbus itself has already won 900 orders this year, outpacing the 635 planes it expects to deliver, he said.
At Boeing, orders as of Nov. 4 were only 498, though John Wojick, sales chief of the airliner division, said he was confident the planemaker will bring the figure up in coming weeks. The company projects 755 deliveries this year.
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