Malaysia-based airline AirAsia has selected Thales to provide avionics systems equipment for its fleet of Airbus A320neo aircraft.

As part of the deal, Thales will deliver its TopFlight flight management system (FMS), Thales/ACSS T3CAS, low-range radio altimeter and emergency location transmitters for its fleet of 304 aircraft.

The deal also includes a long-term, repair-by-the-hour support agreement, which will help AirAsia to reduce maintenance expenses and component cost.

AirAsia started taking delivery of its new A320neo fleet last October.

Thales avionics services worldwide vice-president and general manager Eric Huber said: "The Asian aviation market is one of the most competitive in the world.

“It is therefore a point of particular pride that Thales is chosen time and time again by AirAsia.”

“Carriers like AirAsia must strive to the highest levels of aircraft utilisation and efficiency in order to succeed. As a result, they require an avionics components developer and MRO network they can trust to deliver to the highest standards and with near perfect reliability.

“It is therefore a point of particular pride that Thales is chosen time and time again by AirAsia.”

To be provided by Thales to AirAsia, the FMS system features a hardware that is combined with Airbus Release 1A software.

The system also provides secondary flight plan and realistic navigation trajectory computations or FMS landing system capabilities (FLS) to flight crew.

To be equipped with AirAsia’s new A320neo fleet, the integrated Thales/ACSS T3CAS surveillance platform is also a basic solution for all Airbus single-aisle aircraft.