The simmering rivalry between Airbus Industrie and the Boeing Co boiled over Sunday when Noel Forgeard, the chief executive of Airbus, lashed out at comments that Harry Stonecipher, Boeing's vice chairman, made in an interview with a French newspaper.
Among other things, Stonecipher said in an interview in Le Monde on Saturday that Airbus was to blame for the European Commission's opposition to General Electric's proposed acquisition of Honeywell International.
He said a new trade war could break out if the deal was blocked by the Europeans, which appears to be likely.
But Forgeard, speaking at a news conference at the Paris Air Show, said Airbus supported the deal, a position that was confirmed by GE executives.
He accused Stonecipher of being out of step with other Boeing senior managers and the Bush administration.
``The trans-Atlantic trade situation of large commercial aircraft is absolutely not in the shape that Stonecipher describes,'' Forgeard said. ``In fact, it is on track to be back to normal. Both sides, US and European, are committed to play by the rules and to discuss issues in good faith.''
He said he had met with French trade officials after last week's meeting in Sweden, which was attended by Bush, and that the Europeans were convinced that the new administration was ``looking for solutions rather than for troubles.''
And Jeffrey Immelt, GE's chairman in waiting, said on Saturday that GE had no interest in raising trade tensions even if the commission blocked the Honeywell deal.
A decision by antitrust authorities is not expected until next month.
Forgeard said he had met with Jack Welch, GE's chairman, three times to discuss the deal.
Forgeard said he had endorsed it after obtaining a commitment that GE would not offer package discounts of GE and Honeywell products like jet engines and navigation equipment.
David Calhoun, the head of GE's aero-engine division, said Airbus was ``very supportive in the process.''
Stonecipher, 65, was recently named Boeing's vice chairman. He has spent many years in the aerospace industry, at GE and Sunstrand before taking charge of McDonnell Douglas Corp, which merged with Boeing in 1997.
This is his final air show. He is planning to retire next year but will remain as a Boeing director.
When told that Airbus supported the GE-Honeywell deal, Judith Muhlberg, Boeing's vice president for communications, replied: ``Great.'' She said Stonecipher had not been misquoted in the interview.
In an interview after the new conference, Forgeard, 55, said he liked and respected Stonecipher. But he also said that Stonecipher belonged to an older generation and that his comments were a throwback to a previous era of commercial competition.
``He could not even imagine that Airbus would not object,'' he said.
Today, he said, a younger, more dispassionate and professional group of European and US managers, a group in which he included himself, has moved to the forefront of the industry. ``We are not interested in posturing where there is no need,'' he said. ``We are looking for solutions.''
In the Le Monde interview, Stonecipher also said it was ``absurd'' for Europeans to build their own military cargo plane. And he compared French President Jacques Chirac's opposition to a missile defense shield to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's assurances in the late 1930s that Nazi Germany was not a threat.
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