Air One Places Huge Order with Airbus

Italian airline Air One, the second largest airline in Italy after Alitalia, placed a $1.8 billion dollar order with European airline manufacturer Airbus. Air One ordered 30 Airbus A320 aircraft to replace its fleet of planes supplied by Boeing and has options to order 60 more A320s. The new planes will be delivered between 2006 and 2008 and will progressively replace the airline's fleet of 37 Boeing 737s. Air One is 98 percent owned by Toto, an Italian civil engineering company, and its fleet is based in Rome. The airline carried 5.7 million passengers in 2004 on internal routes in Italy. It also offers code-share flights to Greece, Germany, Switzerland and Canada as part of a partnership agreement with Lufthansa.