Airbus wins Ethiopian order for 12 A350 jets
November 15th, 2009 | by addis portal |DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Ethiopian Airlines confirmed an order Sunday for 12 Airbus A350 XWB aircraft in the first plane sale to emerge from the Dubai Airshow.
The deal officially pushes Airbus’ order book for the wide-body plane past the 500 mark. But it also signals a muted start for the Middle East’s premier aviation fair, as the order has been expected for months and fell far short of the eye-popping deals inked by Gulf carriers at the start of the last show two years ago.
Airbus President and Chief Executive Tom Enders said it was nonetheless a welcome sign in an otherwise difficult commercial aviation market.
“We all believe 2010 and 2011 will be still quite challenging,” he said after signing the deal. “But I think particularly this airshow is encouraging … for seeing that there is growth, particularly in the Middle East, in Africa.”
Toulouse, France-based Airbus valued the deal at $3 billion at list prices. Buyers typically negotiate discounts for bulk orders, however, especially in tough economic times. Delivery of the planes is scheduled to begin in 2017.
Sunday’s signing by the CEOs of both companies solidified a deal anticipated by a memorandum of understanding announced in July.
It marks the first Airbus purchase by Addis Ababa-based Ethiopian, which primarily operates a Boeing Co. fleet.
Airbus said it now has 505 orders for the A350, a new extra wide-bodied airliner designed to compete with Boeing’s long-delayed 787 Dreamliner.
Earlier in the day, Rolls-Royce said it reached nearly $2 billion worth of deals to sell aircraft engines to power Airbus jetliners for Air China and Ethiopian.
The African carrier’s order for the Trent XWB engines that will be used on its new A350s is worth $480 million, Rolls-Royce said.
The British engine maker said the Air China order covers Trent 700 engines to power 20 A330 aircraft being delivered starting in 2011. Rolls-Royce said that particular deal is worth $1.5 billion at list prices.
Ethiopian’s order was the first major aircraft purchase at this year’s Dubai Airshow, which began Sunday.
Plane makers and airlines entered this year’s event with low expectations in light of the economic meltdown, which has eroded demand for air travel and left many carriers strapped for cash.
The last Dubai Airshow was marked by record-breaking orders totaling $155 billion over the course of the weeklong event. Included in that haul were nearly $40 billion worth of firm orders for some 140 planes on the first day alone from Dubai’s Emirates airline and other carriers in oil-rich Gulf.
Industry analysts say a repeat of those huge numbers is unlikely this year.
While Emirates and regional rivals such as Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways are still growing rapidly, they have not been immune to the economic downturn and have hundreds of major plane orders to digest for years to come.
“There’s actually more airplanes on order than in service in the region,” said Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s vice president for commercial airplane marketing. “That’s unique to any market.”
In a conversation with reporters, Tinseth said he expected the world’s airlines to return to profitability in 2011, meaning that demand for new planes would only significantly pick up in 2012.
This year, he said the Chicago-based plane maker plans to deliver between 480 and 485 aircraft.
“With the diversity we have in our backlog right now, we’ve been able to maintain our rates and our production at more constant levels than in past downturns,” he said.
Tinseth reiterated Boeing’s plans to test fly its long-delayed new model, the 787, in December and deliver the first plane by the end of next year.
The company said last week it had finished fixing structural flaws in the first aircraft that had forced it to postpone the test flight for a fifth time. The 787 has been delayed due to a series of production snags and a two-month labor strike last year.
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