Dinesh A. Keskar, the face of Boeing to many people in India, can be seen smiling more often these days. One reason: He has just bagged a $4.4-billion deal from SpiceJet to deliver 42 aircraft, starting 2018. This senior vice-president sales (Asia Pacific & India) for Boeing, who has seen the market in India for the last 25 years, is also a regular at the India Aviation show held jointly by the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in Hyderabad. At the fourth such event, currently under way in Hyderabad, he spoke to Business Today.
While clearly happy with SpiceJet's deal for the 189-seater airplanes, he dismisses as false any view that Boeing is facing increasing competition from its rival Airbus in India. He does not think Boeing is losing out to Airbus at all despite reports that airlines such as Air Asia and Tata-SIA (Singapore Airlines) have opted for Airbus. He says Boeing is the dominant player in the wide-body aircraft segment in India, and the narrow-body market is split equally between Boeing and Airbus. He also does not see any safety issue or challenges in the product, and says many reports on these are based on misconceptions. One challenge that he does talk about is his company's backlog. "We cannot sell to everybody," he says. "If you are willing to wait, sometimes five years, we will sell to you, but you are not willing to wait five years always." He explains this that his company has sold 5,000 aircraft globally which it has not yet billed. He adds: "It is difficult when you say I want an aircraft next year - we just don't have it. So, we work with a combination of leasing company and our own, but it doesn't always work out."
Read news in full 14/03/14 E. Kumar Sharma/Business Today
No comments:
Post a Comment