HAL bags $150-million Airbus order

The Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) has taken another step towards attaining its target of becoming a $4-billion company by the end of the current five-year plan: it has just bagged an order from aircraft manufacturer Airbus Industrie for the supply of 2,000 doors for its single aisle family of aircraft.

The order, worth around $150 million, envisages supply of 2,000 ship sets of forward passenger doors for the A-318, A-319, A-320 and A-321 aircraft of the Airbus family.

Disclosing this to The Hindu, Managing Director of the Bangalore Complex Ashok Nayak said that this was in addition to the earlier orders that the company had received from the European aviation major.

The HAL, which has already delivered around 1,000 ship sets for this family of Airbus aircraft, and is executing an order for another 500, might, according to Mr. Nayak, eventually become Airbus’ single vendor as far as these doors were concerned.

Currently, the Airbus also sources these doors from a company in France.

According to Mr. Nayak, the HAL will start executing the fresh order from 2009. The contract is expected to run for around five years. More importantly, the HAL is likely to supply these doors as long as this family of aircraft are rolled off the Airbus manufacturing line.