Amidst reports that Airbus Industrie has almost clinched the $2.1-billion deal to sell 43 aircraft to Indian Airlines, a senior Boeing official claimed in Bangalore on Friday that the $58-billion US-based global aviation player was still hoping to secure an order to sell some planes to IA.

"We are still in the race for the IA deal, as the Indian government is yet to decide on which aircraft and how many of them were to be acquired for its domestic airliner," Boeing senior vice-president Dinesh A Keskar told rediff.com at the ongoing Aero India 2003 show.

Admitting that Boeing was aware of the recommendation made by the IA board to acquire all of its 43 aircraft from the Europeian consortium (Airbus), Keskar said the company was still in discussions with the government on the proposed deal.

"We have already conveyed to the IA board that we are ready to offer a 10-20 per cent reduction in our price to consider our offer too," Keskar said, adding, post-September 11 the market for new aircraft had shrunk and companies like Boeing have started offering discounts to sustain orders.

Asked whether the government would split the deal and offer to buy some of the required fleet from Boeing as well, Keskar said his company was ready to sell as many as IA would like to buy by renogitiating the price.

Keskar also disclosed that the technical bids for selling 10 Boeing-777-200 aircraft to Air-India were being evaluated.

"We have bid for 10 aircraft, with 7 more as optional. The A-I board is evaluating our offer price. We hope a favourable decision will be taken soon," he added.

The Boeing 777-200 is a twin-aisle twinjet with a capacity of 305-328 passenger seats in a three-class configuration.