Airbus SAS won an order from Steven Udvar-Hazy’s Air Lease Corp. (AL) valued at about $9 billion that includes 25 A350 wide-body jets, a competitor to Boeing Co. (BA)’s grounded 787 Dreamliner.
The A350 purchase consists of 20 A350-900s, the first variant of Airbus’s new long-range plane due to enter service, and five larger A350-1000s. Los Angeles-based Air Lease also agreed to buy 14 single-aisle A321neos that previously had been under option, Airbus said today in an e-mail.
Air Lease’s order is a boost for Airbus as Boeing works to fix electrical faults that spurred regulators to order the global Dreamliner fleet parked last month. Udvar-Hazy, the lessor’s chief executive officer and founder, has 12 787s on order and hadn’t ordered any A350s, a model that will make its commercial debut until 2014 after suffering delays.
Deliveries of Air Lease’s A350s will take place from 2018 through 2022, Airbus said. The A350 order was first disclosed in company filings and subsequently announced by Toulouse, France- based Airbus.
The A350 is Airbus’s biggest twin-engine model, while the A321 is the planemaker’s largest narrow-body plane. Fleet buyers typically get a discount to list prices.
Udvar-Hazy earned a reputation as the godfather of the jet- leasing industry after starting International Lease Finance Corp. in 1973, which he sold to American International Group Inc. in 1990. He left ILFC in 2010 and founded Air Lease.
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