Airlines get an average of a 50% discount on the list price anyway. If you have good negotiators and a bulk order you can command even more, especially if they made a good deal whilst the Covid lull for orders was in effect. It is a substantial figure and for a columnist in a financial newspaper to miss something I discovered with 5 seconds of googling doesn’t reflect well on that columnist.
So it’ll be nowhere near $28 billion USD for a full fleet replacement. Even with that figure I’m not sure how the columnist came out with it. $8.4 and $4.2b for the 321 and 350, if they replaced all 330s with 787-9 (a bit of overkill) that’ll only be $7.9b. Which adds up to $20.5b not $28b. Which they wouldn’t even be paying.
The 737 will still be around til middle 2030s so won’t need to be replaced all at once, the 380s have some life left in them and the 330 orders can be spaced out too.
The fleet renewal is going to take some skill to fund properly but it’s not going to be as daunting as he’s making it out to be.