Transport financier Doric Lease Corporation, which last month established a subsidiary in Ireland, announced it would buy 20 Airbus A380 aircraft in a deal worth $8 billion (€5.9 billion) at list prices and could opt for more. The news puts the European aircraft maker on track to hit its full-year order target for the superjumbo.
Airbus is aiming to sell 25 A380s this year, up from nine in 2012, when orders were hurt by the discovery of wing cracks that shortened the life of certain parts and forced the firm to make costly repairs.
"If those last five are still available at year-end and we can get a good deal on them, we'll certainly think about it," Doric chief executive Mark Lapidus said in an interview on the sidelines of the Paris Air Show yesterday.
Lufthansa orders
Two more A380 orders are already in the pipeline from German flagship carrier Lufthansa, whose board has approved the purchase. But its executive vice-president of group fleet management, Nico Buchholz, said yesterday it was not yet clear when that deal would be finalised.
With a fleet of 35 aircraft and $6 billion worth of aviation assets under management based on the original cost, Doric is considerably smaller than industry leaders such as Gecas and International Lease Finance Corp.
It is the world's 11th-biggest aircraft lessor overall, but a number of A380 transactions – including for Emirates and Singapore Airlines – has made it the third-largest lessor of wide-body aircraft.
That gave the leasing company the scale to put what Mr Lapidus called “tremendous pressure” on Airbus over what he felt was a lack of communication on the A380 wing cracks.
Still, Mr Lapidus said he believed in the long-term future of the A380 and said he was seeing lively interest from airlines for A380 leases, which cost about $2.5 million a month.
He said this showed there was “pent-up demand” for this aircraft. “If anything, we are perhaps under-ordering the A380.” – (Reuters)