Aviation Lease & Finance Co., known as Alafco, is a Kuwaiti aircraft leasing company that currently has 49 planes operating in its fleet. They will generally refrain from buying new airliners until it gets the first of 117 planes already on order in 4 years, Chairman Ahmad Al-Zabin said.
“We need to slow down now or stop rather, until we see what the coming days tell us about the market, about our ability in placing these aircraft,” Al-Zabin said.
Alafco aims to increase operating profit by 10% every year by boosting income from leases on the current fleet, Al-Zabin said. While the company has “good expectations” for the business, it prefers to move cautiously on orders, he said.
“The main aircraft we are interested in now is A320 and 737 new generation or -800,” Al-Zabin said. If a good business opportunity arises with a larger aircraft, the company may go ahead, he said.
Besides the single-aisle planes, Alafco has 12 A350-900s on order from Airbus and also already found takers for half of those. While Alafco has ordered A350-900s, it continues to monitor development of the -1000 version. “We study whatever comes up in the market for these aircraft. Things can always change but for the time being we’re happy with the 900s,” Al-Zabin said.
Based on the article “Alafco to Focus on Sale-Leasebacks for Growth, Chairman Says” published in Bloomberg
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