Dubai Air Show approaches: it's "U-Turn Al" Showtime again!

Every politician knows it: things can change! But there is no competition to as fast as things change in Doha at the headquarter of the 5 star airline Qatar.
Not long ago Qatar was seen as one of the launch customers for the Boeing B777-X. In fact it was the chief itself claiming that the airline wants to be the first customer for the new aircraft family - Aspire Aviation just yesterday published a long piece about the B777X and speculated about the first customers.
But now everything has changed - at least in the mind of "U-Turn Al" (it is about time that he gets an entry in wikipedia I guess). Suddenly Qatar Airways is "not interested" in ordering the B777X.
For now, we should add - or for just that event yesterday in Doha. Of course, things could change again. And Qatar might want to be the launch customer for...well - maybe the A350-1100, because John Leahy told him that this aircraft would be better? Just a very wild guess and I find it's more likely that Al will turn his stance again and order the B777X after Boeing gave him the right discount.

Discussion about the B757 replacement

Scott  Hamilton from Leeham has a post about the possible replacement of the B757.
 King5 then came out with it's own story, citing Scott.

I have to say I do not believe we will see a clean-sheet aircraft as a replacement for the B757 - at least not in the time frame Scott is mentioning. He sees a window for EIS opening in 2025, with Boeing probably being the first mover.
The reasons:

1. Business Case for B737MAX and A320neo. The A320neo will delivered from October 2015 onwards, the B737MAX roughly two years later (July 2017 as it looks right now). If a B757 replacement would be available in 2025, announced to the public by 2020, the B737MAX-9 would be dead by then. The B757 replacement aircraft (B757R) would be more economical on all missions - not just on the longer ones. In other words: if the -MAX9 would be more economical on shorter missions, there would be no justification for launching the B757R. In

Leahys latest order goal...

Today John Leahy said that Airbus now eyes 1,200 orders for this year. Until the end of September Airbus racked up orders for 1,112 aircraft. Taking into account 50 cancellations net orders stood at 1,062. Then today we learned about the JAL order for 31 A350, so we are at 1,093 net. Adding the latest announced orders for the A320 family (62 for Vietjet, 23 for Qingdao, 20 for Zhejiang and another 100 for Air Chian and Shenzen), Airbus would be well over 1,200. And then there is the Dubai Air Show where I would expect that Airbus will try to counter the expected order bonanza for the B777X with some announcements (there are rumours that flydubai could switch to Airbus...).
So an ambitious goal would be - say - 1,500 net orders. But maybe Leahy wants to have more time to go fishing rather than selling more aircraft...