India orders worth $35bn: Airbus
09 Jul 2011
Mumbai: With an order backlog of more than 400 planes to be delivered to Indian carriers, European commercial aircraft manufacturer Airbus has orders worth $35 billion from India, a senior company executive said on Friday.
These planes are to be delivered over the next 15 years, Joost Van Der Heijden, Airbus' head of airline marketing for Africa, India, South East Asia and Japan, told reporters in Mumbai.
Though India is only the seventh-largest market for Airbus, Heijden said he expects this ranking to be revised upwards in the coming years.
"India will move up with traffic growth higher than anywhere in the world," Heijden said.
"The Indian fleet will certainly more than double and could even triple in the coming years," he said on the sidelines of an industry conference organised by Euromoney.
Indian carriers are hoping to capitalise on an economy growing at nearly 9 per cent, which has seen air travel to boom with the business and the middle class increasingly adopting it as their mode of travel.
More than 65 per cent of these orders in value for Airbus were recently placed, with Indian low cost carriers Indigo and GoAir accounting for nearly $23 billion.
Rival Boeing has revealed it has orders worth $15 billion with airlines in India.
