Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 3

Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 3

  • John Leahy, COO-Customers for Airbus, says that after CFM re-jigged the LEAP engine with a larger fan and the seventh LPT stage, has brought the engine to parity with the Pratt & Whitney GTF in fuel burn. The LEAP initially was up to 4% lower in fuel burn, leading to PW’s early lead in sales.
  • “We don’t buy deals,” CFM told our associate, Addison Schonland of AirInsight Wednesday during his visit with them at the Paris Air Show. He’s going to have a special post about the War of Words between PW and CFM soon on AirInsight.
  • The rivalry between Airbus and Boeing, which is sometimes very bitter, nonetheless is superseded at times by good-natured ribbing. Boeing brought its shiny 747-8I, “Big Orange,” into the air show for the first time. The A380 landed and scraped a building taxiing to the ramp and clipping off the wingtip fence. The ensuing publicity wasn’t exactly what Airbus had in mind. A Boeing PR person kidded an Airbus PR person that the pilot had done this deliberately to take attention away from the new 747-8I.
  • In the afore-mentioned incident, the A380 was directed by ground control down a taxi-way that was too close to a building. The A380 pilot question the direction but had been assured it was OK. The A380 was repairs and returned to the show on Wednesday. Upon landing, the pilot stopped the giant aircraft on a taxiway and waited—and waited—and waited for a “Follow me” truck to come out. He clearly wasn’t going to have a repeat of Sunday’s event.
  • Talk about a duopoly. Randy Tinseth of Boeing had been looking at order numbers an in the five years from 2006, there is just a difference of 42 (in Boeing’s favor) vs. Airbus.
  • Day 3 of the air show once again was marred by rain and this time compounded by low temperatures. It was worse than being in Seattle, which is famous for its crappy weather.

8 Comments on “Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 3

  1. Interesting information on the rivalrey between Boeing and EADS/Airbus, as well as P&W and GE/CFM.

  2. “Talk about a duopoly. Randy Tinseth of Boeing had been looking at order numbers an in the five years from 2006, there is just a difference of 42 (in Boeing’s favor) vs. Airbus.”

    This often gets forgotten when the fans of either maker argue about who is better. They both make popular products, and the worst thing that happens if one gets beaten in any given year by the other is that the loser makes a little less money than the winner. This is a business in which both have been winners.

  3. Today: “Airbus disclosed that it had booked a firm order for 10 of its A380 superjumbos from a customer that prefers to remain anonymous for now.”

    Who?

  4. Question is who on earth wrote this Odds & ends article & how much champers they were consuming as they tapped away.

  5. I agree that this was one of the most spectacular Airshows ever, if only because of the huge number of orders for the A320NEO’s and while order for Boeing aircraft were also substantial, there was one
    glaring omission by Boeing as follows:

    As I commented earlier on this site, Boeing should have been more decisive with regard to the need
    for an all new 737 and recognized that they had no choice but to announce their firm intentions to
    have a go-ahead, if not a formal launch for an all new 737 aircraft, at the show.

    As one major airline executive commented at the show, Boeing was pussyfooting around too much, instead of doing what they should’ve done with the 737 and announce an all new airplane to replace it, which would have slowed down the cascade of orders for A320NEO’s!.

  6. How many of those A-32X-NEOs would have been A-32X orders anyway?

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