A321ceo vs. B737-900ER deliveries

After yesterdays order from Jetblue for 30 more A321 (15 x A32ceo and 15 x A321neo with the right to convert to the A321LR), the order from Air Asia for 100 A321neo's and the conversion from Norwegian, now taking 30 A321LR, I looked into the delivery breakdown of Airbus und Boeing's narrowbodies.
Airbus delivered 40% of their narrowbodies as the A321this year so far - Boeing delivered less than 10% of all their B737NG's as the B737-900ER version.
The jury is still out if the pressure for Boeing is big enough to be forced to launch a B737MAX-10 or a clean-sheet MoM aircraft. GE Aviation CEO still has problems with the business case, as one could read in one of the latest editions of Flightglobal (sorry, I have no link, saw it on hardcopy only).
Boeing said they still have time to decide what to do...

Lion Air - another Boeing-Airbus splitter?

In one of my recent posts I speculated about a large narrowbody order accompanying the launch of the low cost carrier from Lion Air and NADI, based in Kuala Lumpur and aimed to take on Air Asia. But Rusdi Kirana, owner of Lion Air, said that the aircraft will be B737-900ER and probably later on B737MAX-9 channeled through Lion Air's existing order book with Boeing.
Now there are news out, reporting that Kirana said that Lion Air needs more planes and Scott Hamilton predicts an order for 100 A320neo's to be knocking at John Leahy's door.
I remember (and found) a press article last year, a few weeks after the massive order from Lion Air for B737-900ER and B737MAX-9 was announced, in which John Leahy mentioned that Airbus and Lion Air already had a MoU in place, but then political pressure from the White House inhibited Lion Air from defecting from Boeing to Airbus. Who know - maybe the MoU is still valid?
It looks like there are two 100-aircraft-orders in the works in Toulouse. The other of course being for AirAsia. Reports last week said that this is not only for the A320neo - earlier reports suggested that the A320ceo is the aircraft to be ordered as Tony Fernandes said that AirAsia needs more planes "soon". I guess there will be also a nice number of A330-300 (presumably the new 240t version) and maybe more A350's in the deal. At last weeks ISTAT Europe the A330-300 was one of the most mentioned aircraft (in a positive way): Nico Buchholz, Lufthansa VP Fleet Strategy said that it is a "bloody profitable" aircraft for their North America destinations. But also AirAsia Co-Founder Conor McCarthy was very positive about the aircraft (but he also thanked god that AirAsiaX has just two A340-300 in the fleet).
The new (still to be announced) AirAsia order was public since Farnborough (or even earlier, I don't remember exactly). It will go to AirAsia's board in the coming days and then officially announced. I would guess the Lion Air order for A320neo's (if true) will be announced shortly thereafter.
As boring the summer was in terms of new aircraft orders (at least since Farnborough), as interesting might get the rest of the year...

Is Delta Air Lines competitive with the B737-900ER?

Yesterday came the press release confirming Delta's order for 100 B737-900ER.

These will delivered between 2013 and 2018 and there is no mentioning of a possibility to switch to the reengined variant.
In the press release Delta stresses a fuel burn advantage of 15-20% against the B757, B767 and the A320. If fuel is responsible for about 40% of your cash operating costs, this is big and results in 6-8% lower COC's. But to be competitive, Delta has to look what the competitors will do, especially the low cost carriers, which have lower COC's to begin with.
Virgin America and jetblue have ordered the A320neo