Air India Goes 20/20 With Airbus A350-900 & -1000

Via data observed in the Airbus Orders & Deliveries spreadsheet, it has emerged Air India has now gone 20/20 with their A350-900 & -1000 orders.

Previously, the order was for six -900s and 34 -1000s, as part of their major blockbuster order made earlier this year, but things have changed.

Without further ado, let’s get into it…

Air India Goes 20/20 With Airbus A350-900 & -1000…

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On the Airbus side of the blockbuster order made back in February, this was dissected into the following:

140 A320neos.
70 A321neos.
34 A350-1000s.
6 A350-900s.

Orders @airbus November include 52 cancellations, resulting in 1395 net orders year to date.@airindia swapped 70 A320neo for A321neo aircraft, bringing the A321neo backlog to 140.
There were 50 A320neo cancellations, including 46 from ALAFCO + 4 undisclosed.
— Richard_on_aviation (@rschuur_aero) December 5, 2023

The A350-900 and -1000 order alteration isn’t the only one that they made with the European planemaker.

As Richard Schuurman at AirInsight rightly notes, Air India has swapped 70 A320neo aircraft on order to the A321neo, which means that the order now looks like this instead:

70 A320neos.
140 A321neos.
20 A350-1000s.
20 A350-900s.

Of course, it is unclear why the orders have been swapped around, but it clearly fits within what the Indian carrier wants out of these next-generation aircraft.

The changeover into -900s could produce a little bit of a blow to Airbus on the -1000 side of the equation, following the criticism given to the variant by Emirates President Sir Tim Clark over engine reliability issues.

On the Air India side of the equation, it is unclear whether this reason is the same or not.

What remains clear is that there is clearly a change of tact going on at the Indian carrier, and it will be interesting to see if more alterations are made going into the future.