Huge Airbus A400M military plane finds a friend in Indonesia

Indonesia has signed up to take the massive military transporter despite the aircraft's troubled development history and an overrun of millions of euros.

Indonesia has signed a letter of intent to buy Airbus A400M military aircraft, the French president François Hollande’s office said.

The provisional agreement was signed during a visit to Indonesia by Mr Hollande this week and covers an unspecified number of aircraft, according to a list of deals issued by his office.

If completed, it would provide the troubled European military programme with a second export customer after Malaysia.

A previous deal to export the massive A400M aircraft, which can carry a load of 25 tonnes over a range of 2,000 nautical miles, to South Africa was cancelled in 2009. Chile was also at one time seen as an export partner for the aircraft, which has run into billions of euros of cost overruns and years of development delays.

The UK’s royal air force took delivery of the first Airbus A400M Atlas aircraft in November 2014. The arrival of ZM400 heralded the staged delivery of a further 21 aircraft, in a schedule expected to be complete by 2019.

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Hinting at industrial work as part of any deal, the head of Airbus Military Aircraft, Fernando Alonso, said the aircraft would form the basis of further industrial co-operation and could eventually boost the Indonesian air force’s mobility arm – a type of unit which typically handles troop transport.

At present Indonesia operates Lockheed Martin C-130 transporter planes and Spanish CASA planes built under licence.

Airbus said the letter of intent was signed by Pelita Air, representing a consortium consisting of state-owned companies.

“Future discussions will address, among other things, the number of aircraft to be encompassed in an eventual contract and possible industrial cooperation arrangements,” Airbus added.

* Reuters

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