Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian said in a Sept. SpiceJet isn’t the only potential NMA buyer that’s pushing Boeing to make a decision. The manufacturer has diverted engineers and the NMA’s program manager to the 737 program, the company’s largest source of profit, and reiterated that it won’t make any decisions on the midrange plane until the Max is flying again. The Max grounding is delaying Boeing’s decision on whether to build a midrange jetliner called the “new midmarket airplane," or NMA, which analysts have dubbed the 797. “It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, of course - our entire infrastructure is geared for a Boeing fleet - but if this takes too long, we may not have too much of a choice." “You need to keep evaluating, and we are evaluating the Airbus options," he said. planes, Singh said SpiceJet would consider flying Airbus models as well, particularly if the Max issues continue to distract Boeing. While the airline’s fleet consists of Boeing and Bombardier Inc. SpiceJet has taken a number of older 737s while the Max remains on the ground, but those jets are more expensive and less efficient to operate, Singh said. The carrier is in conversations with Boeing about compensation for the costs incurred from the grounding. “We look forward to the Max aircraft coming back because that’s where the biggest pain point for SpiceJet is currently," he said.
While Indian regulators plan to conduct their own checks, Singh said he hopes SpiceJet will begin flying its Max planes again in January. More than six months later, the timing of the return to service remains unclear as regulators worldwide conduct independent assessments of the jet’s airworthiness.īoeing has told SpiceJet that it expects US regulators to re-certify the plane in early November, Singh said. The Max has been grounded worldwide since March after a pair of crashes killed 346 people. The LR and XLR variants are longer-range variants of the plane. While Singh didn’t specify the exact size of a potential transaction, he said “any aircraft order that SpiceJet places would at least be 100 aircraft." That would value the deal in excess of $13 billion, based on 2018 list prices before customary discounts for the A321neo. SpiceJet, India’s second-largest airline, has 13 Max jets already in its fleet and has committed to buy as many as 205 of the single-aisle workhorses as it expands capacity to handle the nation’s fast-growing demand for air travel. The discussions with Airbus threaten Boeing with a high-profile defection at a time when the US planemaker is enmeshed in one of the biggest crises in its 103-year history.
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