Le Bourget: Emirates said it would decide on an order worth as much as $20 billion for mid-sized planes by October and that the design of the Airbus A350 XWB was closing in on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.
Emirates President Tim Clark said he was ruling out splitting the order for as many as 100 planes between the two manufacturers.
Boeing has accused Airbus of touting an incomplete design to airlines in its bid to draw attention from the hot-selling 787.
Airbus, which revamped and relaunched the A350 last year with a wider fuselage after airlines rejected an earlier design, said it had locked in the plane's main design features. "We know as much as we need to know about the plane (the A350) to contribute to the decision process," Clark said.
"From what we have been given on performance and economics, irrespective of how it is produced, it looks like a good machine," he said. "I think it'll do the job."
At stake are the fuel-efficiency and other performance measures needed to win control of an estimated market for some 5,000 long-distance twinjet planes over the next 20 years as airlines brace for little relief in high fuel costs.
So far, Boeing is five years ahead of Airbus in terms of development and dominates sales in the segment with nearly 600 orders.
But Boeing's initial success in selling the 787 - it is sold out until 2013 - has restored the balance between the two planemakers for potential customers prepared to wait until the A350 enters service from that year.
Airbus is resisting pressure from at least one of its customers, major aircraft leasing firm ILFC, to change the way it builds fuselages after Boeing opted for new technology allowing it to build the tube out of composite barrels, reducing parts.
Clark said he believed Boeing's barrel idea was the plane of the future but would not be a deal-breaker for the next order.
