Paris: Boeing arrives at the Dubai Air show tomorrow on the tailwind of its 787 Dreamliner finally in service, gaining a boost of confidence after rival Airbus dominated their most recent duel four months ago in Paris.
The 787 began flying with All Nippon Airways last month to end more than three years of delays. Airbus won't have a new plane until 2014's first half, with Thursday's six-month postponement for the entry into service of the A350-900. It also ended production of the unsuccessful A340 long-haul model.
Dubai's event is usually geared toward wide-body jets, the dominant fleet type at Middle East carriers such as Emirates and a category where Boeing leads. Airbus's upgraded A320neo single-aisle jet won 667 orders and commitments at the Paris show in June, as Boeing pondered how to respond to the fastest-selling aircraft in aviation history.
"In June, Airbus was soaring and Boeing was in the dumps," said Wolfgang Demisch, a partner at aerospace financial consultant Demisch Associates LLC in New York. "Now Boeing is doing well and Airbus is taking its lumps."
The challenge for both planemakers will be getting their new jets to customers on time, Demisch said. With backlogs stretching for years, "what they need now is production success and delivery success, and both of them have shown that that's very difficult to achieve," he said.
Max versus neo
Since Paris, Boeing has countered the A320neo with the 737 Max, a version of its top-selling model to be fitted with new engines. Chicago-based Boeing is targeting 2017 for first delivery of the Max, for which the company reports more than 600 commitments in four months. The A320neo is due to enter service first, at the end of 2015, and may garner contracts with carriers including Qatar Airways in Dubai.
It has collected more than 1,000 firm orders since being introduced in December.
Wide-body planes such as Boeing's 777 and 787 Dreamliner and the A330 and future A350 from Toulouse, France-based Airbus are workhorses in the Middle East industry.
Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad are using bases in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi as intercontinental hubs to win passengers from incumbents such as Air France-KLM Group and Deutsche Lufthansa AG. Qatar is the first customer to get the A350, which will also be made of composite materials.
Aggressive expansion
Carriers in the region account for less than eight per cent of global traffic, according to the International Air Transport Association trade group. At the same time, their outstanding orders are valued at $82.7 billion (Dh303.7 billion), or a quarter of all Airbus and Boeing twin-aisle planes, according to consultant Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia.
Including single-aisle planes and the A380 and 747 jumbo jets, Gulf carriers comprise a fifth of the world's backlog, Teal Group estimates.
