Go Air - a new budget airline in India - is planning to buy up to 20 A320 narrow-body jets from European manufacturer Airbus.
The deal was confirmed yesterday by Go Air head Jeh Wadia at the Asian Aerospace Show in Singapore.
Although he did not reveal the value of the deal, he said it included firm orders for ten aircraft, with options on a further ten.
Go Air, which began opera-tions last October, competes in the fast growing Indian market with state-owned domestic carrier Indian, Jet Airways and other discount airlines such as SpiceJet and Air Deccan.
The order came as John Leahy, the top marketing man at Airbus, forecast a major slowdown in demand for new jet airliners.
Mr Leahy expects the airliner market will slump by more than half this year to about 800 aircraft, well below the record 2,057 planes sold last year by Airbus and arch rival Boeing.
Both manufacturers will sell around 400 planes each this year, he added.
Mr Leahy said he expected several airlines to sign up in the next few months for the mid-sized A350 model due in 2010, and he expected to sign two new customers for the 555-seat A380 this year.
Asked about possible new models, Mr Leahy acknowledged that new products were under consideration, including a 1,000-seat stretched version of the A380 super-jumbo and a freighter version of the popular A330-200 passenger plane.
"We always look at updating our products - it comes down to what customers tell us they want," he said.
A freighter version of the A330 could speed the end of the older A300/310 family of planes, but Mr Leahy said Airbus was still assessing the economic viability of keeping that line open.
He also said airlines were asking about changes to the slow-selling A340, a four-engined model that is being outsold by the two-engined Boeing 777.
One idea would be to apply technologies developed for the newer A380 and A350 models to upgrade the A340.
