The battle of the order books at the Dubai Air Show just swung way over to the Airbus side, with a nearly $50 billion order for 430 single-aisle planes for U.S. airline investor Indigo Partners topping Emirates’ order for $15 billion worth of 787s.
But Boeing came up with another Middle East ace a bit later, a $27 billion deal that will add 225 737 Max 10s to FlyDubai’s fleet. Like Emirates, FlyDubai is owned by the Dubai government. It operates as a discount carrier.
Indigo’s order, which includes 273 A320neos and 157 A321neos, is Airbus’s largest single order ever. Indigo Partners is a U.S. investment firm specializing in low-cost airlines. It controls Frontier in the U.S., JetSmart in Chile and is preparing to open a low-cost carrier in Canada. It also has sizable interests in Volaris of Mexico and Hungary’s Wizz Air.
Indigo buys planes, and leases them to airlines in its group. The planes in this order will be split among the four airlines.
The FlyDubai order contained a surprise; most news coverage before the deal assumed that the airline would split its order between Airbus and Boeing, even though up to now FlyDubai has been an all-Boeing carrier. It’s a big leap forward for the airline, which presently has 58 planes, with about 70 more already on order.
