Saudi Arabian Airlines is exploring a potential order for Boeing 777X widebody jets, according to three sources familiar with the matter. It was not immediately clear when Saudi Arabia’s state-owned airline, also known as Saudia, could reach a deal or how many 777X jets it is interested in. The airline’s director-general Saleh bin Nasser al-Jasser said last November that a wide-body jet order would be considered in 2018. A potential Saudia order could alleviate production pressure for Boeing which is now unlikely to sell 80 jets that Iran Air ordered before the US withdrew from a nuclear deal with Iran and said it would reimpose sanctions on Tehran. <br/>
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Air France KLM, hit by strikes and without a CEO since May, reported higher traffic figures that lifted its battered shares, while sources voiced caution about the possible appointment of a top French transport executive as its new boss. The company said the group overall - comprising the networks of Air France KLM, Hop! and Transavia - carried 9.3m passengers in June, up 3.7% from a year earlier. The overall load factor, a measure of the extent to which an airline has filled its planes, rose to 89.3% in June from 87.7% last year, it said. The higher figures lifted Air France KLM shares, which were up 7.2% in mid-session trading, but they remain down by roughly 40% so far in 2018, mainly due to the impact of the strikes on the company. “Overall, June’s traffic stats are a return to normality and highlight the favorable market conditions that exist despite the strike which impacted April and May results,” wrote Irish brokerage Goodbody in a research note.<br/>
Russia’s Aeroflot is in negotiations to conclude an expanded order for up to 28 Airbus A350 passenger jets worth $7.8b at list prices, two industry sources said. The long-awaited deal would double an order for 14 aircraft that has been on Airbus’s books for almost a decade without being fulfilled as the airline went through economic upheavals. In 2007, Russia’s biggest airline ordered 22 A350s including 14 of the baseline A350-900 version and eight of the smaller A350-800, which Airbus later withdrew due to weak demand. Also that year, Aeroflot signed a contract for 22 Boeing 787 Dreamliners but later said it had cancelled the order. The deal, however, remains on Boeing’s catalogue of unfilled orders, indicating the contract has not been formally severed. One of the sources said Aeroflot was now discussing doubling the unfulfilled A350 order to 28 aircraft. Another predicted a total order for 25 airplanes.<br/>