Sure Enough... It Ain't Over Yet!

Almost immediately after typing the last sentence of our report on Boeing's seeming domination of aircraft sales to date at Farnborough 2006... Airbus revealed a few orders of its own.

In fact... as of this writing, Airbus has recaptured the sale crown -- at Farnborough, at least -- with orders or commitments for 85 planes, compared to Boeing's 76 planes through Wednesday. A full 60 of those orders were announced in the last 24 hours.

So... who's ordering what from Airbus? The Associated Press reports Malaysian carrier AirAsia dominates the order book, with 40 firm orders for planes from the A320-family, with an option for 30 more. And aircraft leasing company ILFC picked up six of the narrowbody jets.

Greece's Aegean Airlines picked up three A320s, as well, and Spain's Grupo Marsans signed a nonbinding agreement to purchase 12 A330-200 widebodies, with an option for 10 future airframes. Airbus also announced one order, from an unnamed European customer, for an A319CJ corporate airliner.

Earlier in the show, India's GoAir ordered ten A320s, and Air Caribe picked up one A330-300.

All told, the orders announced Wednesday brought Airbus's tally of orders to approximately $6.3 billion list -- still under Boeing's estimated $10 billion in new business, most of which has come on orders for larger, more profitable planes. (Of course, few if any airlines pay list price for their planes.)

And speaking of larger planes... so far, no new orders have been announced for Airbus' A350-XWB family of planes, unveiled Monday.

Airbus says several buyers of the original A350 -- including Kingfisher, Yemenia and Finnair -- have agreed to hold onto their orders for the new plane, however... a victory in itself.

FMI: www.airbus.com