Japan Airlines just signed a deal to buy 31 A350 airliners from Airbus. At $200 million each, this is $12 billon in sales, quite a chunk of change. The A350 is so new it just made it's first test flight this summer and has a year or two of testing and certification before it can be delivered. It's carbon fiber (fiberglass) construction, intended to compete with Boeing's 787. Boeing could have had this sale, if their 787 had not been so late, and if it hadn't had those battery fires. Up until now, Japanese airlines were all Boeing fleets, Boeing and the Japanese industry had numerous joint ventures and cross sales arrangements. Now that JAL has bought Airbus, the other Japanese carriers are expected to follow suit.
Aviation Week credits the Airbus sale to effective work by top Airbus executives, Leahy (no first name given) Head of Sales, and Fabrice Bregier, CEO. They also mention JAL's new chairman, Kazuo Inamori saying that an airline as big as JAL ought to have more than one supplier. Which is true.
Also interesting is the backlog of Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 orders. Although Boeing has 979 orders for 787's, Airbus is running hard with 725 orders for the A350. Each backlog represents about $2 trillion dollars worth of business. Staggering.
2 comments:
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