Aeroflot places order worth $2.5 billion for Airbus A330 planes

Refusing to bow to the dictate of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of buying Russian-made planes, the country's largest airline OAO Aeroflot, has gone ahead and placed order worth more than €2 billion ($2.5 billion) with Airbus for its A330 planes.

The Moscow Times yesterday reported citing a source that Aeroflot has placed the order with Airbus a few days ago.

Aeroflot, one of the world's oldest airline, has embarked on modernising its fleet, restructuring its extensive routes and working on overhauling its image.

Aeroflot's CEO, Vitaly Savelyev, had said last week that the airline is likely to place orders for 22 Boeing-787 Dreamliners and 22 Airbus-350 jetliners and expects delivery to be done by 2016.

This order is over and above the order placed for 30 Sukhoi SuperJet 100-Russia's first major commercial airplane project since the fall of the Soviet Union.

According to a transcript of a meeting between Putin and Savelyev that was put on the Prime Minister's website, Putin told Savelyev, ''I want to understand how much domestic technology Aeroflot will buy, you want to dominate the domestic market, but you do not want to buy Russian technology.