Airbus Order and Deliveries 2013

The final numbers for orders and deliveries from Airbus came out yesterday. There were no big surprises - just a few things to clarify...
The "mystery buyer" of 100 A320 appears to be Air China and Shenzen. Compare the numbers that Airbus reports to the numbers when the upcoming order was announced back in May.
I have no clue however who is the unidentified customer for the 20 A320neo. Loong was reported to have ordered 20 A320 at the end of December, but this should be a mix of 11 A320ceo and 9 A320neo and this order is missing in the 2013 table.
There are quite a few A320ceo&neo orders to be firmed up in 2014:

• VietJet for 20 ceo and 42 neo
• Qingdao for 5 ceo and 18 neo
• Spring for 30 ceo
• Lybian Wings for 4 neo
• Hong Kong Aviation for 60 neo
• CASC for 42 ceo (but that could disappear now that individual chinese airlines place orders themselves)

as well as

• Doric for 20 A380
• Chinese airlines for some more A330

So the offical goal of  book-to-bill just simply greater than 1 does not seem overambitious. Chinese airlines are still behind in the race for reengined narrowbodies, despite the 100 A320 order and probably some of the unidentified orders for the B737MAX coming from China. So I guess we will see some more A320neo and B737MAX (maybe also CSeries) orders from China this year.
An announcement to increase production for the A320ceo before production ends and for the A320neo to a range of about 50 per month seems to be inevitable and we should expect it soon.

The possibility of a A330neo was downplayed by Airbus officials yesterday. It would be just one option and not the main one...of course they have to downplay the possibility as long as possible as they have to protect sales of the existing model. But I would not be surprised if we would see a move in the first half of the year.

Strong 5th season at Boeing

As expected not only Airbus had a "fifth season" in 2013 but also Boeing.

And these are the final numbers:

Gross:
1208 B737 (699 -MAX, 509 -NG)
    17 B747-8
      2 B767
   121 B777
   183 B787
 1531

Net:
1046 B737 (699 -MAX,  347 -NG)
    12 B747-8
      2 B767
  113 B777
  182 B787
1355

Especially the B737NG and the B737MAX had very strong order intakes in December 2013.
All in all 124 B737MAX and 143 B737NG orders were recorded. All but the order for 75 B737MAX and 11 B737-800 were from unidentified customers. Chinese airlines and jet Airways (for 50 B737MAX) are hot suspects for these.
The situation for the B737NG as I described here is a little better now but still Boeing has to sell about 690 B737NG's to fill all productio slots until the B737MAX takes over full B737 production.

One thing that is clear even before the Airbus numbers will be published next Monday is that despite the large December order intakes Airbus outsold Boeing with the A320neo against the B737MAX as Airbus sold 759 A320neo until the end of November. But the recent win at Air Canada (which is not reflected in the 2013 numbers) and flydubai could hint that that could change in 2014 as with the recent announcement of production increases to 47/month for the B737 line Boeing can offer fresh delivery slots. We will see how soon Airbus will hit back...

BREAKING: US Secretary of State Kerry first to fly the A320neo

Apparently Airbus sped up the development effort for the A320neo. It appears that US Secretary of State John Kerry was among the first who were able to fly in the reengined european narowbody during a visit of the Philippines. Look here for details! No mentioning of who is the first customer of the A320neo - but in the end: could it be the US Government???

Boeing also having a "Fifth Season" this year?

After giving an outlook to Airbus' Fifth Season for this year yesterday, I want to look what we can expect from Boeing until the end of the year? Will it also be a record year? The last year was the year were Boeing took in a record number of orders, thanks largely to the B737MAX, which had it's first

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,