Paul Lewis/SINGAPORE
Royal Brunei Airlines (RBA) has been forced to postpone taking delivery of two Airbus A319s in the wake of a senior management shake-up within the company, and after having failed to meet payment deadlines to the manufacturer.
RBA had been scheduled to take delivery of the two International Aero Engine V2500-powered A319s direct from Airbus next June and July, after signing a letter of intent early this year and making an initial down payment. The airline, however, has failed to firm up an agreement and has fallen behind on scheduled progress payments.
As a result, delivery of the twinjets has been delayed once, to August and September, by RBA swapping its production positions with those of US Airways. There is now a danger that the A319s delivery schedule will slip further, or that the deal will be cancelled altogether if the airline's new management does not act promptly.
RBA's plans have been thrown into further doubt by the recent removal of the carrier's managing director, Haji Brahim, just five months after he was officially confirmed to the position. He had been acting managing director since April 1997.
Brahim had been under mounting pressure from the Government of Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah to turn around the airline's finances by restructuring its operations. The carrier only suspended services on two of its biggest loss-making routes, from Bandar Seri Begawan to Osaka, Japan, and Beijing, China, the day before Brahim's removal was officially announced. "He didn't produce the goods," says an airline insider.
The state's reluctance to continue pumping money into RBA, which has never released its financial figures, and Brahim's reluctance to go the banks, has been a root cause of its A319 procrastination. A final decision on the aircraft now rests with the airline's board and newly appointed executive director and former head of the Brunei Investment Agency, Sheikh Jamaluddin, who has been critical of both Brahim and the decision to order the aircraft.
Deferral of the the two A319s poses a dilemma for RBA, which had planned to the use the aircraft to replace its two Fokker 100s. The carrier is understood to have already signed a memorandum with an undisclosed buyer to take the aircraft from January. The airline is beginning to run down its Fokker 100 crews and has already booked time on Asia-Pacific Training & Simulation's new A320 simulator in Singapore.
Source: Flight International
