Expected sales of the
Airbus SAS A330 series aircraft may last beyond 2020, as the company
aims to secure more orders from both regular and budget airlines, a
company official said on Friday.
The France-based aircraft
manufacturer’s statement comes as the company is to deliver a mid-range
wide-body A330-300 plane to TransAsia Airways Corp - one of the three
listed airlines in Taiwan — in Toulouse, France, today.
“A330 is
the most economical and advanced wide-body aircraft in service today,”
Marino Modena, a product marketing manager for the Airbus 330 and 340
aircraft series, told a media briefing.
Modena said the company
had evaluated in an internal meeting that sales momentum for the A330
family could continue for at least 10 years, attributing the optimistic
forecast to the company’s continuous efforts to improve the A330 series.
Airbus
has spent US$200 million per year in raising A330 series’
competitiveness by innovating and transferring its technology and
systems, the company said in a report.
Other than service
upgrades, these innovations successfully boosted the plane’s cost
efficiency by lowering its cash operating cost by 10 percent compared
with its peers, the report said.
In addition, A330 series
aircraft are characterized by their high flexibility as they can be used
to operate routes between 30 minutes and 14 hours, Modena said.
That
has driven up demand from regular airlines needing to replace their
fleet, as well as from budget carriers focusing on regional routes, he
added.
Airbus has received 2,160 orders for A330 series aircraft
since it began service in 1993, with 1,283 planes already delivered to
clients, the report’s data showed.
Orders for the A330-300
aircraft, which has 300 seats, reached 598 as of the end of September,
accounting for more than a fourth of total orders of A330 aircrafts,
data showed.
Fifty percent of A330-300 aircraft orders have been
placed by carriers in the Asia-Pacific region, while European and North
American carriers account for 24 percent and 18 percent respectively.
TransAsia
Airlines ordered two A330-300 planes in November 2010, with one
scheduled to be delivered today. The second is expected to be delivered
in January. Both aircraft are set to operate on routes to Singapore and
Osaka, Japan, TransAsia Airlines said in an earlier statement.
Neither
Airbus nor TransAsia specified the price paid the two A330-300 planes.
Sources from the companies said the listed price for an A330 is between
US$150 million and US$200 million. However, airlines usually receive
discounts from aircraft makers and the final price is rarely disclosed.
TransAsia
is to become the third carrier in Taiwan that has added A330-300
aircraft to its fleet, after China Airlines Ltd and EVA Airways Corp.
Airbus
remained upbeat about next year’s prospects for the aerospace industry,
expecting passenger traffic to grow at a steady pace with an average
annual rate of 4.7 percent between this year and 2031.
Overall,
Airbus forecast a total of about 28,200 new passenger jets and
freighters worth nearly US$4 trillion by all manufacturers over the next
20 years, a 1.3 percent increase from a 27,850 estimate for jet
deliveries given by Airbus last year, when the aircraft maker raised its
20-year forecast by 7.7 percent.
Emerging economic regions are
estimated to represent more than half of all traffic growth in the next
20 years, with new aircraft deliveries in the Asia-Pacific region set to
account for 35 percent of all deliveries, the statement said.
Airbus
posted consolidated revenues of 25.62 billion euros (US$33.23 billion)
in the first nine months of the year, up 14 percent from a year earlier,
with consolidated earnings before interest and tax rising by 184
percent from a year ago to 837 million euros, according to company data.
Article: http://www.taipeitimes.com
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