India Daily: IndiGo Prepares for Delivery of 500-Jet Order

Budget carrier IndiGo is preparing to take delivery of around 500 narrow-body A320-family jets from Airbus worth $50 billion. The European plane maker has emerged as frontrunner for an order eclipsing Air India’s historic provisional purchase of 470 jets in February, the sources said on the sidelines of an airline industry meeting in Istanbul. IndiGo is one of Airbus's largest customers and has so far ordered a total of 830 Airbus A320-family jets of which nearly 500 are yet to be delivered. Airbus and U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing are also in separate talks to sell 25 A330neo or Boeing 787 widebody jets to the carrier, the industry sources said.

Indian carriers now have the second-largest order book, with over 6 percent share of the industry backlog, behind only the U.S., according to a recent Barclays report. The drive by IndiGo comes as the world’s third-largest aviation market is seeing a strong rebound in travel post-Covid, with passenger numbers surging desp