Company In Talks For As Many As 1,000 New Dreamliners

After all the to-do from Toulouse (via Farnborough) Monday, as Airbus announced its new family of midsize widebodied aircraft... you might be wondering how Boeing reacted to news of the new and improved A350. Well, low-key is probably a good way to describe it... as 787 chief Mike Bair says it's nothing unexpected.

"There were no surprises. The new A350 was as expected. The biggest mystery perhaps was whether they were going to stick with the name, which they more or less did," Bair (right) told Marketwatch shortly after Airbus CEO Christian Streiff announced the new A350 XWB quintuplets. "I get the sense that they're not finished."

Bair added he felt Airbus's presentation was too short on specifics -- and that the European consortium may be "trying to cover a lot of real estate with just one plane."

"At this point, we're not overly concerned," Bair added.

As Aero-News reported Monday, Airbus plans on variants of the A350 XWB family to compete with Boeing's 787 line... as well as Boeing current two-engine widebody standard-bearer, the 777.

By pushing the new A350 (below) into competition against two lines of aircraft, Bair said, Airbus runs the risk of making smaller versions of the A350 too heavy. Not that Boeing would mind that, of course... as Boeing is currently sold out of the 787 through 2011, one year before the A350-900 is expected to enter commercial service.

Boeing Commercial Aircraft boss Alan Mulally also said Monday company is now talking with about 30 customers for as many as another 1,000 orders for the Dreamliner... and while it's unlikely all of those orders will go through, the demand might be enough for Boeing to push ahead with a second production line for the 787.

Bair is still cautious about that decision, however.

"What you don't want to do is to spend a lot of extra money for extra capacity and then only use it for a year," he said.

FMI: www.boeing.com, www.airbus.com