Recently, our Finance Ministry's commercial aviation arm signed a purchase contract to buy six Airbus 380 which cost US$2.2 billion in published figures.

In another report I happened to read yesterday, Korean Air also purchased the same Airbus 380, five airplanes with a contract value of US$1.35 billion.

While I understand that aircraft configuration may be different for the Airbus 380 between Malaysian Airlines and Korean Air, but would that make such a big difference in the pricing? Average price for the Malaysian purchase is US$367 million per aircraft, while the Korea's purchase is US$270 million.

Can anyone please explain the great difference?