Posted by John Keller
FARNBOROUGH, England, 22 July 2010. Business dealings at the Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, England, wrapped up Thursday afternoon with a rough count of 821 passenger aircraft sold during the first four days of the show. Little, if any, business typically is conducted at this show on the final Friday.
Among the most interesting aspects of this flurry of new passenger aircraft buying was the near lack of sales of the biggest and most heavily touted aircraft at the show -- namely only three sales of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, 15 purchases of the future Airbus A350 widebody, and zero purchases of the giant Airbus A380 super jumbo jet.
Instead, commercial aviation mainstays such as the Boeing 737-800, the Airbus A320 family of narrow-body jetliners, the Airbus A330 widebody, and a variety of regional jet and turboprop passenger aircraft constituted the vast majority of commercial aircraft sales here at Farnborough.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which had been expected to steal the show as it made its international debut at Farnborough, stayed around for only two days and flew off, ostensibly for more pressing engagements, and left with only three sales, those to Royal Jordanian airways. Some not-so-good news for the 787 at Farnborough: 787 deliveries to U.S. carrier American Airlines will be pushed back to 2014 because of program delays.
Commercial aircraft sales that Avionics Intelligence had not reported through Thursday morning included the sale of 40 Airbus A320 narrow-body passenger jets to Virgin America, which would triple Virgin America's fleet. Other sales included sales of two Boeing 787-800s to Alaska Airlines.
Brazilian manufacturer Embraer sold 24 Embraer 190 twin-engine narrow-body jetliners to Republic Airlines, and another 20 Embraer 190s -- five of those are options -- to Air Lease Corp. in Los Angeles.
Canadian manufacturer Bombardier, meanwhile, sold six Bombardier Business Jets, four long-range Global Express XRS jets, and two large-cabin Challenger 605 jets to VistaJet of Switzerland.
During the course of the Farnborough air show, European manufacturer Airbus announcements commitments for a total of 255 aircraft worth about $28 billion. The commitments so far include firm orders for 133 aircraft worth more than $13 billion, plus memorandum of understanding (MoU) agreements for a further 122 aircraft totalling around $15 billion.
The firm orders at the show came from GECAS for 60 A320s worth around $4.9 billion; from Air Lease Corp. for 51 A320 family aircraft worth $4.4 billion; from Aeroflot for 11 A330-300s worth $2.3 billion; from Garuda Indonesia for six A330-200s worth $1.2 billion; and from Germania for five A319s worth $372 million.
The MoU commitments included: 40 A320s plus 10 A321s together worth $4.2 billion from LAN; 10 A330-200s worth $1.9 billion plus 15 A350 XWBs worth $3.8 billion from Hong Kong Airlines; 40 A320s worth $3.3 billion from Virgin America; and seven A330-300s worth $1.5 billion from Thai Airways International.
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