Toulouse, France - Airbus has received a firm order for four Airbus A330-800 jets from an anonymous customer.
The customer was not disclosed by the European planemaker. With this recent order, the number of the A330-800 jets on the manufacturer's backlog became fourteen.
The launch customer Kuwait Airways has eight units in its order book with Airbus. The other two A330-800 jets belong to the newly revived African carrier Uganda Airlines. The owner of the remaining four planes remains yet unknown.
The A330-800 is the smaller and the less popular variant of the A330neo family. The A330-900 has so far accumulated 285 orders from the customers around the globe against the 14 of its little sister A330-800.
Airbus developed the A330-800 as the successor of its older generation A330-200.
There are probably two reasons which make aircraft to sell slower than the A330-900. Firstly, there are still lots of of relatively young A330-200 jets on service with the airlines and some of them are even under ten years old.
And finally, there is a huge second-hand market for Airbus's A330ceos. Airbus is positive that the sales of the A330-800 will boom in the coming years when the older A330-200s approach to the end of their lifespan.
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