Airbus Adds 83 Orders in May

The month of May was kind to European airframe maker Airbus. The company said Tuesday morning that it took 77 orders in May for its A320 single-aisle planes and six orders for its wide-body A350 planes. The company also said it delivered 57 planes in May.

The company has taken 162 net new orders in the first five months of 2016:

• 46 for the A320/321 current engine option (ceo)
• 60 for the A319/A320/A321 new engine option (neo)
• 17 for the A330ceo
• 14 for the A330neo
• 25 for the A350 XWB

U.S.-based competitor Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) has logged 236 net new orders in 2016 through May 31, including an order for 100 737s from Vietjet in the last half of the month. That represents 63 net new orders since the end of April, when Boeing had 173 orders. Boeing reports orders weekly on Thursdays.

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The first quarter was truly awful for Airbus. The company logged a total of just 10 net new orders for its airplanes in the entire quarter. Airbus added 82 net new orders in April to get back on track somewhat.

Airbus took another shot last week from Qatar Airways, which cancelled its first order for an A320neo and may cancel four more single-plane orders due to delays in delivery. Worse is that Qatar Airways has been talking to Boeing about ordering 737s. Airbus is also on the hook to deliver 10 A350s to the airline in 2016; so far Airbus is late delivering the first three, but the company says that deliveries are imminent.

Airbus wrote 1,080 new commercial jet orders in 2015, down from 1,456 in 2014. For 2016 the company has said it expects more than 700 net new orders.

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