Jet Airways to buy 75 more Boeing 737 worth $10 billion

NEW DELHI: Jet Airways on Monday announced it will buy an additional 75

Boeing

737, taking its total order for this aircraft to 225. At current list price, Jet’s order for 75 B-737 Max is worth almost $10 billion. “The company has entered into another agreement with Boeing or purchase of an additional 75

Boeing 737 Max

aircraft,” Jet said in a regulatory filing to BSE Monday.


This is the third time that Jet has placed an order for 75 B-737 Max, the first of which has just been inducted into its fleet. While India is the fastest growing domestic air travel market globally, Jet has been a very distant second to IndiGo in the domestic market share.

While IndiGo has been adding planes aggressively to its fleet constantly, Jet has been very slow on that front. A large part of the previous order was seen as replacing the Naresh Goyal-promoted airline’s ageing fleet. This third tranche indicates Jet will try to regain its domestic market share as all other private Indian carriers have huge orders for aircraft.

The Jet-Etihad combine (the struggling Abu Dhabi-based carrier has 24% stake in Jet) has emerged as the largest airline combo in terms of flying people in and out of India. However, on domestic front, Jet has been playing a second fiddle for some years now. The latest DGCA data for domestic travel last month showed IndiGo had 40.9% share while Jet was second at 15.2%.