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Airbus on high on record $A68b show sales

23 June 2011 14:18 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Nijat Mustafayev - APA-Economics. Aircraft manufacturer Airbus is celebrating a 51 billion euros ($A68 billion) haul of orders, including the biggest single airliner order in history, in a home turf victory over US rival Boeing at the Paris Air Show.

"It’s the best air show ever for Airbus in terms of orders," the European giant’s chairman Thomas Enders told reporters on Thursday after confirming Malaysia’s AirAsia would buy 200 of A320neo fuel-efficient medium-haul jets.

This brought Airbus’ order book for the week at the Le Bourget aerodrome north of Paris to 730 airliners, including 701 for the firm’s new star, the single-aisle A320 in both its original and fuel-efficient "Neo" variant.
Details of the contracts were not always confirmed, but at catalogue prices the orders represent confirmed sales worth 31 billion euros and memoranda of understanding for the purchase of aircraft worth 20 billion euros.

Shares in Airbus’ parent group EADS shot up two percent on the news of the AirAsia deal, despite it having been widely trailed. AirAsia’s chief executive Tony Fernandes was on hand to announce the deal alongside the jubilant Airbus team - striking a deal to buy a record 200 A320neo jets for a price of 12.7 billion euros. "It is the largest single order for Airbus in terms of numbers of aircraft," Enders said, while observers noted it was in fact the biggest order in unit terms ever placed for commercial airliners. The order makes the Malaysian low-cost pioneer Airbus’ biggest customer, with a total of 375 planes on order and 89 A320s already in service.