SCATTERED LIKE SPLINTERS:

Boeing to score big 787 order in Paris: Major Airbus customer to take up to 50 planes (JAMES WALLACE, 6/12/07, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER)

In what will be seen by many in the industry as a stinging rebuke for Airbus and its planned A350 jetliner, its biggest customer is expected to place an order for as many as 50 of The Boeing Co.'s 787 Dreamliners at next week's Paris Air Show, an industry source confirmed Tuesday night. [...]

Airbus has been widely expected to use the air show in Paris to gain traction for the A350 XWB (extra wide body). So far it has only a dozen or so firm orders for the plane that it needs to challenge Boeing's hot-selling 787, which has nearly 600 firm orders.

ILFC is the biggest Airbus customer, but Steve Udvar-Hazy, its founder and chief executive, told the Seattle P-I last week at an industry conference in Vancouver, B.C., that he has not been given enough details about the A350 to decide whether he wants the plane.

Instead, Hazy will order more 787s, the industry source said. ILFC ordered 22 787s in November 2005.

Of course, if ILFC were to be nationalized it would order the Airbus instead.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 13, 2007 7:26 AM