Airbus, Boeing duke it out amid buying spree

Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak al-Nahyan, wearing sunglasses, center, the UAE Minister of Education and President of Higher Colleges of Technology and Scientific Research, visits the Dubai Air Show in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, last month. PHOTO: AP

The faces of an Airbus team at a recent aviation industry dinner in Sydney showed the strain of winning orders amid the biggest airline buying spree in history.

Led its Australian vice president for the Pacific, Rod Mahoney, Airbus left the party before dessert to go back to its office for an all-night session of presumed price shaving on its bid for a Qantas order worth at least US$16 billion.

Across hall Boeing's Australia team, led by its regional vice-president Rick Westmoreland, stayed on for the sweets, but showed no signs of being confident they had the Qantas order for up to 100 wide-bodied jets in the bag.

The Australian carrier will announce its decision on Thursday as to whether the mega-order will go in full or larger part to the US or the European plane maker. On the other hand it just might ratchet the tension up a few notches by announcing just a part of the order, with further instalments next year. No one is certain and Qantas isn't telling, and yet more than the largest order in the history of Qantas is up for grabs.

The final weeks of this year have turned into a gigantic sales contest between Airbus and Boeing and one in which Boeing is currently well out in front.

Hong Kong based Cathay Pacific Airways is expected to place an order for an initial 16 Boeing 777-300ER jets and perhaps take options out on a further 10 deliveries, disappointing Airbus which had hoped it would buy its competing "improved" version of the A340-600 jet.

Singapore Airlines is also finalizing an order for at least 50 similarly sized 250-300 seat jets. The decision was originally expected this month but is now rumored to be more likely to be announced in the New Year.

These are the three major sales scalps in the unfinished business of a record-breaking year in airliner sales following to the Dubai Air Show. There the big two manufacturers officially sold US$21 billion worth of planes, with Boeing trumping Airbus by US$14 billion to US$7 billion.

Seattle Toulouse both hailed the sales haul at Dubai as proof that the boom times are at last returning after the calamities of 9/11 in 2001 and the SARS outbreak in 2003.

In fact the Airbus chief operating officer and chief sales person, John Leahy, who is seen at the headquarters of Qantas, Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines more often than he is spotted at Airbus HQ in Toulouse, France, credits the fuel price crisis with causing much of the boom.

"Higher oil prices mean suddenly airlines need very fuel efficient jets," he says. "We have those jets."

And procession of senior figures from Boeing, in Sydney, Singapore and Hong Kong, have been making sure the major airlines of the Asia-Pacific know that Boeing has such jets as well.

Despite minor public quibbling around the exact figure for confirmed orders, what's clear is that the resurgence of Boeing over Airbus is not in doubt. This though doesn't really matter according to Airbus's CEO Gustav Humbert.

"The challenge for Airbus is producing aircraft fast enough to keep up with demand," he says.

For the record, Boeing appears to have beaten its previous annual sales record of 878 jets (in 1998) while there have been about 670 confirmed sales of Airbus models. But the sales game is far from over as there are as many as another 300 sales yet to come by the end of this month.

Airbus Boeing used to make jets to suit their best European and US customers. But it is the needs of the Asia-Pacific carriers that dictate design today, because they are the ones making the most money and experiencing the most growth both in the numbers of passengers carried and in the tonnage of freight shipped.

The big buyer league is dominated by Emirates, Qatar Airways, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, and dozens of aggressive new low-cost entrants in India and China.

Emirates, the world's largest customer for the giant A380 airliner, which could seat 880 people at a pinch, told Airbus and Boeing to go away and do a better job of designing their new medium sized airliners, the Airbus A350 and the Boeing 787.