After two days of multiple announcements of orders for new airplanes at the Farnborough Airshow in Britain, Wednesday morning seemed a bit calmer. Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) issued four press releases touting orders totaling 45 new airplanes, and Airbus issued one press release finalizing an order for 62 new planes.
The bulk of the orders at both companies have been written for the single-aisle, narrow-body workhorses: Boeing’s 737 family and Airbus’s A320 family. And as we noted in our earlier stories, all “orders” are not created equal. There are firm orders, commitments, memoranda of understanding, letters of intent and various adverbial phrases like “finalized an order” that carry various shades of meaning that only industry insiders understand.
The two aircraft makers combined have announced orders totaling about $31 billion in the first three days of the Farnborough show. Two years ago the two companies announced a total of $124 billion in new orders in the first three days of the 2014 Farnborough show — Boeing had racked up $63 billion and Airbus $61 billion. By the end of that show, the two firms had taken orders for nearly 700 new planes.
As far as firm orders are concerned, Airbus continues to build on a lead it established on Monday. By our count, the European plane maker had announced firm orders for 26 current and neo versions of the A320, 105 new orders for both versions of the A321, and three new orders for the A350-900. The Airbus count does not include a finalized purchase agreement for 62 A320neos from Synergy Aerospace, the largest shareholder in Avianca and owner of Avianca Brasil, that was announced Wednesday morning.
Boeing’s firm-order total is a little harder to ascertain. The company has finalized an order for 20 747-8F freighters that was announced last summer with a Russian cargo carrier. Several other orders (29 new planes announced Wednesday and 13 announced on Tuesday) simply put airline names to previously unidentified customers in Boeing’s order book.
Boeing has taken orders for 12 787 Dreamliners, including finalizing one for six of the planes that was first announced in May. Airbus has taken orders for up to four A330-900neos and three A350-900s. These are the only orders announced so far for wide-body planes.
Through Wednesday morning, Airbus has announced 262 orders, compared with 102 for Boeing, according to a count at The Wall Street Journal.
Boeing’s stock traded down about 0.8% in the noon hour Wednesday, at $129.80 in a 52-week range of $102.10 to $150.59.
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