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PARIS, Sept 17 (Reuters) – Malaysia’s AirAsia AIRA.KL has reached a deal with Airbus AIR.PAto restructure an outstanding order for hundreds of A320-family passenger jets, industry sources said on Friday.
Asia’s largest low-cost airline group is one of the European planemaker’s biggest customers but deliveries to the airline have been disrupted in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.
The AirAsia deal does not involve cancelling the roughly 400 jets on order but includes a new delivery schedule and price cuts or other improvements in terms, the sources said.
Airbus declined comment, while AirAsia did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The agreement caps intense negotiations between AirAsia and Airbus after steadily worsening relations had cast a pall over one of the industry’s closest pairings.
AirAsia said last year it would stop taking deliveries of all Airbus jets and review remaining orders.
Industry sources said it had also stopped sending progress payments to Airbus, prompting the planemaker to suspend plans to produce jets on order pending the new restructuring deal.
(Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Louise Heavens)
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