Jet Airways set for big plane order

NEW DELHI - Jet Airways (India), the nation's biggest domestic airline, says it may exercise options to buy 20 planes from Airbus and Boeing as it adds overseas routes.

The order, valued at US$4.2 billion ($6.6 billion), is for 10 A330s made by Airbus and 10 Boeing 777s, adding to 20 planes of the same designs ordered last June.

CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said the airline wanted to operate 130 jets by 2009, up from 54 now.

"We will have to look at more planes beyond 2009," said Prock-Schauer, a former vice-president of Austrian Airlines who was hired by Mumbai-based Jet Airways in June 2003.

India overtook China last year as the biggest purchaser of aircraft, ordering more than US$30 billion of planes from Airbus, Boeing and Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica.

Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines and eight start-up carriers are expanding their fleets to prepare for a surge in air travel in India, where ticket sales may double to an estimated 90 million by 2010 from the 40.1 million in the 12 months to March last year.

Jet Airways ordered 10 Boeing 777 planes and 10 A330s last June to fly to the US and Europe.

The carrier, owned by London-based billionaire Naresh Goyal, wants to add flights to London and Singapore and begin US flights by 2007 to tap the large number of ethnic Indians living overseas, Prock-Schauer said.

Jet Airways may also buy as many as 20 planes, each with fewer than 100 seats, from Bombardier and Empresa Brasileira to replace its turbo-propeller and regional jet planes, Prock- Schauer said.

Bombardier, based in Montreal, Canada, is the world's third-biggest aircraft maker. Empresa Brasileira, also called Embraer, ranks fourth.

The smaller regional planes will be used to upgrade the fleet flown by Sahara Airlines, which Jet Airways proposed to buy in January for US$500 million.

Prock-Schauer said Jet Airways was awaiting the Indian Government's approval on the takeover, the biggest there in a decade.

- BLOOMBERG