15% of Airbus ACJ fleet fly in Russia

More than 25 Airbus business jets have been delivered to Russia and the CIS, marketing and communications director of Airbus Corporate Jets David Velupillai said few days before the JetExpo 2013 started. The global Airbus business fleet amounts to 170 aircraft, the figure including 110 ACJ318s, ACJ319s and ACJ320s based on the A320 family of narrowbody commercial airliners, and 60 widebody ACJ330s and ACJ340s. This means that Russia and the CIS are served by some 15% of the total Airbus bizjets.

Airbus Corporate Jets envisages good prospects for further increase in their business aircraft sales in Russia. Preliminary estimate by Airbus shows that Russia is the second top region after the USA for both the number of high net worth persons who are the long-established group of ACJ customers and for their net worth, Velupillai added.

Airbus Corporate Jets would not disclose their sales breakdown by region. According to Velupillai, last year eight narrowbody and one wide-body aircraft were delivered to the customers worldwide and ACJ expects roughly the same delivery figures this year.

In 2014, first ACJ321 will be delivered. The only order for the giant Airbus A380 in corporate configuration have been resold to another customer, so re-outfitting its cabin may took two years. Bleeding-edge A350s are also open for deliveries in corporate configuration, but all currently available production slots for the type are pre-ordered by commercial air carriers.