Airbus and Boeing land £58bn of sales
THE world’s two biggest aeroplane makers ramped up t heir battle f or t he s ki es as t hey s ol d j ets around £58bn.
European giant Airbus sold 430 planes for £38bn to a US budget airlines investor – outdoing archrival Boeing which sold 225 planes worth £20bn worth to Fly Dubai.
Airbus also finalised an order for 90 planes from Dublin firm CDB Aviation Lease Finance.
The three deals are for the smaller j ets, with airlines increasingly wanting nimble planes for short-haul flights.
US firm Boeing’s deal with Fly Dubai will see the Middle Eastern airline buy 175 of the 737 Max aircraft and get purchase rights over a further 50.
European consortium Airbus is selling the A320-neo family jets to airlines investor Bill Franke and his Indigo Partners investment fund.
Indigo plans to supply the jets to four budget airlines in which it invests: Hungary’s Wizz Air, Frontier Airlines in the US, Mexico’s Volaris and Chilean Jet Smart. ‘The deal is a massive boost for British jobs, as wings for the planes are made i n Broughton, north Wales, and Filton, Bristol.’
However, it has highlighted the relative failure of Airbus’s superjumbo j et, the A380, which is hoping for a new order from Emirates. The A380 can carry more than 550 passengers and is the world’s biggest plane, but demand has not been as strong as hoped, and only 317 have been ordered so far. A much-anticipated order from key client Emirates appears to have stalled at the last minute, with discussions believed to be ongoing at the Dubai air show last weekend.
Max Kingsley- Jones, content director at industry magazine Flight Global, said Airbus’s super-jumbo had pushed Boeing out of the big aircraft market. He added: ‘Airbus can’t build the A320 fast enough – the A380 they can’t build it slow enough.’
Wizz,whichh as flights between the UK and Europe, plans to take 146 of the order from Airbus.
The deal is a boost at a troubled time for Airbus. It is under investigation by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office and its French counterpart over its use of intermediaries in plane sales.