Thai Airways may split its order for the wide-body aircraft it plans to add to its fleet by 2017 between Airbus and Boeing, the airline's president said. "The wide-bodies could be A350s and/or 787s, and they could also be supplemented with some 777s," Piyasvasti Amranand told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Thai Airways, 51 percent owned by the Thai Finance Ministry, has said it plans to add 37 aircraft - 11 narrow-bodies and 26 wide-bodies - worth about 216 billion Thai baht ($7.15 billion) by 2017 to replace some of its older planes and expand its fleet.
If the carrier decided on some Airbus A350s, it would probably choose the A350-900 as the A350-800 is "too small".
No final decision has been made yet on what types of aircraft the carrier will order as the government first needs to sign off on its plans to acquire more planes.
"The timeframe for a decision is probably going to be the middle of this year. The contract signing could come shortly after that," Amranand said. He said he was happy for Airbus and Boeing to compete for the planned orders, which could be for delivery from 2013.
"Playing one manufacturer off the other can often be a good thing," he said.
The planned narrow-body orders will not be for latest-generation aircraft, he said.
"We need them as soon as possible," Amranand said, adding these aircraft may be added to the fleet by the end of this year. "These could be A320s, Boeing 737s, something along those lines." He said the company had not yet decided whether to order more A380 aircraft, in addition to six it has already ordered. "It's very large. It's hard to fill up in the off season."
The orders will boost Thai Airways' fleet to 105 planes from 85 now and reduce the average age of its aircraft to about 8.5 years from 11.5 years.
Airlines around the world have used a number of strategies to cope with the rising cost of jet fuel, including hedging, dropping less profitable routes and replacing old gas-guzzling aircraft with newer, more efficient ones. Thai Airways has said soaring oil prices may cause it to review its target for 2011 revenue of about 200 billion baht. Amranand said there was no new target yet.