Airbus Set To Win Back Sales Crown From Boeing

December 31, 2008

Barring any last-minute deals, Airbus has won back the hotly contested race for annual orders from rival Boeing.

Neither company is likely to celebrate, however, as overall sales are down sharply from last year's record, and the year ahead looks bleak as the global recession puts the squeeze on airlines and stunts demand for new planes.

According to its online order book, Airbus had 756 firm orders at the end of November, not counting cancellations and other changes. On the same basis, Boeing had orders for only 662 planes last week.

Boeing, which is set to publish its final annual sales tally early in the New Year, is unlikely to pull past Airbus in the final week of the year, even if it firms up a recent agreement by American Airlines to buy 42 of its 787 Dreamliners.

That would leave Airbus, which usually announces yearly orders later in January, as the world's biggest-selling plane maker, a title it won from Boeing in 2001 but gave back in 2006. Last year, Boeing notched an all-time industry record of 1,413 firm orders.

For 2008, the two companies' combined order tally looks like it will hit 1,500 or so, which historically is high, but marks a steep drop-off from last year's industry record of 2,754 orders.

The decline clearly marks the end of an unprecedented boom in plane orders, largely fueled by ambitious Asian and Middle Eastern carriers that may now need to scale back their growth plans as recession strangles spending on business and leisure travel.

Boeing and Airbus' main concern now is holding on to the massive backlog of orders on its books, as airlines reconsider purchases made in a more optimistic economic climate.

Between them, the two plane makers have more than 7,000 orders to fill over the next few years, but analysts reckon that up to 70 percent of those could be deferred, and a smaller portion canceled outright, as airlines find it impossible to use the planes profitably.