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March 19, 2024
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Singapore-based lessor BOC Aviation has secured long-term delivery slots with Airbus by ordering A320neo family aircraft that will be delivered between 2027 and 2029. With the A320neo family sold out until 2027, BOC has at least safeguarded delivery positions for its medium-term future. BOC Aviation secures long-term slots for A320neo family.

BOC Aviation and Airbus announced an order on April 11 for eighty aircraft: twenty A320neo’s, fifty A321neo’s, and ten A321XLRs. “This is the largest single order that we have ever placed and it will bring our total Airbus aircraft purchased since inception to 546. It underscores our continued confidence in the A320neo family for its reliability and operational efficiency and reflects the popularity of the aircraft amongst our airline customers”, CEO Robert Martin says in a media statement.

BOC earlier placed orders for 86 A320neo’s, of which thirty remain on the backlog. Of the 22 A321neo’s on order, only three remain to be delivered. This means that the lessor has only 33 neo’s up for delivery in the next couple of years before its runs out of them, although BOC said in March that it still needs to secure placements for aircraft that are delivered in 2023. How many of them are neo’s isn’t clear.

The lessor could even risk having no neo’s on offer at all between the delivery of the final aircraft from the current backlog and the first arrival of the new ones. It could secure aircraft through more purchase and leasebacks, in which aircraft are delivered to airlines and subsequently sold to and leased back by a lessor. BOC Aviation did 43 PLBs in 2020 and 29 in 2021 when it temporarily withdrew from the PLB market after intense competition from new and aggressive lessors made it impossible for BOC to secure agreements at good margins and returns.

Air Lease Corporation also secured long-term slots

Securing delivery slots some years out in the future is something also done by Air Lease Corporation when it announced a huge order at last year’s Dubai Airshow. These included 55 A321neo’s and twenty XLRs, most of them for delivery from 2027. In Dubai, Airbus Chief Commercial Officer Christian Scherer called the ALC order a smart move to position itself very early for delivery slots. It underpins the demand that we see for our product line.” In today’s press release, Scherer makes an identical remark: “We salute its (BOC) vision and foresight in securing future delivery positions of these most desirable assets in the single-aisle segment now and in the longer run.”

In March, BOC Aviation filled up its backlog with an order for eleven Boeing MAX 8s that will be placed with Canadian start-up airline Lynx, we launched its first services last week. 

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Active as a journalist since 1987, with a background in newspapers, magazines, and a regional news station, Richard has been covering commercial aviation on a freelance basis since late 2016.
Richard is contributing to AirInsight since December 2018. He also writes for Airliner World, Aviation News, Piloot & Vliegtuig, and Luchtvaartnieuws Magazine. Twitter: @rschuur_aero.

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