MUMBAI: Billionaire Indian investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala backed low-cost airline Akasa Air has placed an order for 72 Boeing 737 MAX jets. A Boeing executive said on Tuesday that the orders by Akasa were incremental orders. 

According to a recent Bloomberg report, with American planemaker Boeing bagging this deal, it would offset European multinational Airbus SE’s dominance in India, which was until recently, considered the world’s fastest-growing aviation market.

Last month, SNV Aviation, which owns Akasa Air, had said that it expected to start flying next year after getting initial clearance from the Civil Aviation Ministry to launch the country’s latest ultra-low-cost carrier. 

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in August had allowed the country’s airlines to fly the MAX jet to end its nearly two-and-a-half-years of regulatory grounding. 

The 737 MAX was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after two fatal crashes in five months killed 346 people, plunging Boeing into a financial crisis, which has since been compounded by the COVID-19 outbreak. In 2019 Boeing ended the year with more than US $60 billion in debt and a historic loss of US $12 billion.

After going through troubled times, in March 2021 Boeing announced that it had signed two deals since the jet’s safety ban was lifted. One to sell 24 of the 737-8 model to a backer of Canadian low-cost carrier Flair Airlines and another one in the pipeline to sell dozens of 737 MAX 7 jets to Southwest Airlines in potentially its largest 737 MAX order.