Airbus announces its biggest-ever sale

Last month, Airbus (www.airbus.com) said it would be selling 430 aircraft to the US firm Indigo Partners for $49.5 billion — the European manufacturer’s biggest deal ever.

The announcement, made at the Dubai Air Show, is for 273 A320neos and 157 A321neos. The airlines that will use these aircraft include Frontier Airlines, JetSmart (Chile), Volaris (Mexico), and Wizz Air (Hungary). Indigo Partners is a private-equity firm based in Phoenix, Arizona. It owns Denver-based Frontier Airlines and part of Volaris.

Airbus’s previous biggest sale came in August 2015, when it sold 250 A320neos to the Indian budget airline IndiGo in a deal estimated to be worth $26 billion at list prices. IndiGo and Indigo Partners are separate firms with separate management.