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Dubai: Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), the state-owned aviation services company that ordered 200 Airbus SAS and Boeing Co. planes in November, plans to spend a further $2 billion through 2009 to expand its leasing fleet.
Carriers in Asia, Europe and the Middle East hold "a lot of opportunity" even as " airlines are weighed down by fuel prices and a slowing economy, Robert Genise, chief executive officer of Dubai Aerospace's DAE Capital leasing unit, said in a telephone interview from Seattle yesterday.
At its 2006 founding, Dubai Aerospace set a goal of becoming a $15 billion company competing with International Lease Finance Corp. and GE Commercial Aviation Services, the world's two biggest airplane lessors. Dubai's government has earmarked more than $82 billion for aviation investments including an airport bigger than London's Heathrow and Chicago's O'Hare combined.
Record rates
Aircraft lessors are benefiting from record rates as airlines demand more planes than Boeing and bigger rival Airbus can produce. " carriers may decide this year to swap aging fleets of MD-80s for more fuel-efficient 737s, Scott Carson, Boeing's commercial-aircraft chief executive officer, said in February.
At the same time, Asian airlines are leasing and buying more planes as economic expansion in China, India and Southeast Asia makes travel affordable to more people. International Lease Finance has said it plans to buy at least 286 planes to tap rising demand from Asia. Capacity will expand by 8.8 per cent this year with an expected 472 plane deliveries for the continent, according to the International Air Transport Association.
DAE Capital predicts that 35 per cent of its fleet will be leased in Asia within five years, with Europe and the Middle East accounting for about 25 per cent each and the Americas 15 per cent, Genise said. Deliveries of the 200 planes ordered at the Dubai Air Show begin in 2010, and meanwhile DAE will focus on acquiring widebody planes such as Airbus's A350 and Boeing's 787 and 777 models, using them for sale and leaseback deals with airlines.
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