January 21, 2008
BANGKOK - Privately-owned Bangkok Airways is to receive up to six Airbus A350XWB aircraft beginning in 2015 under a deal signed last December, according to the airline and European plane maker Airbus.
A spokesman for Bangkok Airways said an order for six planes had been under negotiation for two years and would now be filled at the rate of two planes a year from 2015.
In Toulouse, southern France, an Airbus spokeswoman put the number of firm orders at four, with a possibility that two more medium-sized, long-range A350s could be delivered as well.
Neither the airline nor the manufacturer would comment on press reports here that the total cost of six planes would come to 700 million dollars (477 million euros).
The Airbus spokeswoman said the catalog price for six aircraft was 1.2 billion dollars.
Bangkok Airways has asked for the A350-800 model, the smallest of three versions, for use on flights to Europe and Australia. Depending on configuration, the A350 can carry between 270 and 350 passengers.
Airbus said the contract was signed December 3 last year but was not immediately made public. It was on a list of 1,341 orders placed with Airbus in 2007 that was disclosed at an Airbus press conference on Thursday.
Bangkok Airways in December 2005 declared an intention to buy an earlier version of the A350, which was scrapped a year later by Airbus in response to client preferences.
The new XWB version, launched in December 2006, comes with an extra wide body, and is scheduled to be ready for delivery in 2013.
To date the A350XWB has received 292 firm orders.
