Everyone's a winner, baby...

Boeing‘s Randy Tinseth can’t resist to screw every statistics in his (i.e. Boeing’s ) favour. This makes him of course no different from John Leahy, head of sales at Airbus. Now, after Air Canada firmed up their order for 61 B737MAX yesterday, Tinseth claimed that the B737MAX gained more than 50% of the market since it’s first order. Granted – Boeing has now 1908 firm orders for the B737MAX in the books and Airbus sold “just” 1521 A320neo since the first order for the B737MAX from Southwest Airlines. But does that really matter? Boeing’s first firm order for the B737MAX from Southwest Airlines in December 2011 came more than one year after the launch of the A320neo on Dec. 1^st, 2010 and Airbus booked the first order for the A320eo from Virgin America in late December that year. By the time of the first B737MAX order Airbus already had 1,176 firm orders for the A320neo family and so they had 89.55% of the market (“Neo vs. MAX”).

In 2012, the first full year where the B737MAX was available, Boeing had the upper hand: 949 firm order for the B737MAX meant a 66.5% market share for that year with Airbus being in the overall lead with 61.6% (1,764 vs. 1,099 orders).

In 2013 the picture reversed in favor of Airbus –they sold another 937 A320neo aircraft where Boeing gained “only” 703. Overall Airbus held a market share of 59.7%.

Until today in 2014 Boeing sold 117 B737MAX – Airbus sold 57 A320neo. So one could conclude that the market lead for Airbus dwindles away. But there are a few large already won campaigns for Airbus  to be firmed up: Tigerair (37 A/C), China Eastern (70 A/C), ANA (30 A/C) and a few others – like Monarch – are waiting for their winner. So I guess Airbus’s John Leahy will soon have an answer for Tinseth’s anaylsis with his own statistics.

The better choice than throwing  with statistics would maybe be that both gentlemen would unite to sing the Hot Chocolate song "Everyone's a winner" - although I cannot imagine them singing together the line "Making love to you is such a thrill..."...

In retrospective, the decision by Airbus to launch the A320neo brought record full order books for both and helped both to fend off Bombardier's CSeries. And there is some truth of course in the claim that SVP Andy Shankland from Airbus made at the ISTAT America this year, that it would be fair to say that the B737MAX was launched in Toulouse. So Randy could bring a bottle of wine to the party to celebrate their appearance in front of the aviation audience. I would give a fortune to see and hear them...

Fifth Season Time in Toulouse

The end of the year is near and so it is fifth season time again for John Leahy. Tomorrow we will see if he can sell some 60-90 aircraft to Air Canada, believed to be A320neo and A321neo's (or B737MAX-8/-9 if his counterparts at Boeing succeed).
But there are quite some more sales to complete this year and chances are good that Leahy will top the old record from 2011, when the A320neo had it's first full year of sales.
So what can we expect apart from Air Canada? Another awaited order for narrowbodies could come from Monarch. Both Air Canada and Monarch could also put a CSeries order in their shopping cart,

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.