Airbus delivered its first twin-engine, wide-body A350 to launch customer Qatar Airways on December 22. On Thursday that airplane left Doha on a flight to Frankfurt, Germany, for its first commercial flight.

The A350 XWB (for extra-wide-body) is the Airbus response to Boeing Co.’s (NYSE: BA) 787 Dreamliner. After a long and contentious discussion that began with a rework to the company’s A330, the new jet finally got the green light from Airbus management in late 2006, two years after Boeing launched the 787. The A350 XWB would include a carbon body and was projected to cost $11 billion to develop, compared with the reworked version of the A330 that would have cost about $4 billion. Unlike the 787, the A350 does not use the lithium-ion batteries that caused Boeing so many headaches in early 2013.

At the end of December, Airbus had taken orders for 780 of its three models in the A350 family, compared to 1,071 orders for Boeing’s 787. Since the first delivery in October 2011, Boeing has delivered 228 of the two available models of the 787. Qatar Airways has ordered 80 A350s, 43 of the current A350-900 and 37 of the A350-1000, which is scheduled to enter service in 2017.

Airbus suffered a serious setback in its A350 program earlier this year when Emirates airlines cancelled a firm order for 70 of the planes. Emirates is still the largest customer for the superjumbo A380, having ordered 140 of the behemoths and taken delivery of 57. At the time it cancelled the A350 order, Emirates placed an order with Boeing for 150 of its new 777X aircraft, due for first delivery in 2020.

Boeing, loath to allow Airbus even a single moment in the sun, this morning identified the customer that placed an order in December for 14 787-9s. At list prices the order from Spain-based Air Europa is valued at $3.6 billion.

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