Kuwait Airways has restructured its order with Airbus, adding smaller, long-distance aircraft while reducing a commitment to the planemaker’s largest model as the carrier adapts to post-Covid demand.
The loss-making airline added three mid-range A321LR narrowbodies and upscaled six workhorse A320neos to the bigger A321neo model, it said Monday.
Part of a wide-body order for A350-900s, which can seat as many as 350 people in conventional configurations, and for A330-800s, was replaced with A330-900 jets. The total number of Airbus wide-bodies didn’t change.
Kuwait Airways chairman Ali Al-Dukhan said he had made it his top priority to restructure the deal struck with Airbus in 2014 to suit the airline’s future, with the need to be more flexible in a post-covid aviation industry.
The state-owned carrier hasn’t made a profit since the Iraqi invasion in 1990.
The new deal positions the airline “in a much stronger place to succeed for the next 15 years,” Al-Dukhan said at a press conference Monday.
The shuffle takes Kuwait’s eventual Airbus fleet to 31 aircraft. It also has Boeing 777s in operation.
Three A350-900s were removed, leaving the airline with two on order. A commitment to the A330-800 was cut by four, while seven A330-900s were added.
Several other airlines have made similar changes, adding Airbus’s popular A321 – which can fly longer routes more economically – while cutting exposure to expensive wide-body models.
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