January 4, 2003	Saturday	Shawwal 30, 1423

PARIS, Jan 3: Largely because of a last-minute order by EasyJet for 120 A319 aircraft, Airbus says that for the second year in a row it managed to significantly outdistance Boeing in the number of firm orders it received.

Even before the last-minute signature in the night of December 30-31 of a contract with low-cost carrier Easy-Jet, worth more than $3 billion, Airbus was expected to announce 189 firm orders, as against to 184 announced by Boeing. The EasyJet order gives it absolute control of the world civil aircraft market, in which it is now responsible for a 65 per cent share.

Last year, Airbus had outdistanced Boeing, its only other international rival, by 375 to 329 firm orders, whereas in 2000, Boeing had easily surpassed Airbus with 605 orders as against to 520 for the Toulouse-based manufacturer. The only other previous year when Airbus had done better than Boeing was in 1999, when it announced 476 orders, as against to 358 for Boeing.

With the EasyJet contract — a firm order for 120 Airbus A319 aircraft, with an option of another 120 copies of the same aircraft — Airbus will be able to announce, when it releases its financial results, that for last year it received a total of 309 aircraft as against to only 184 for Boeing. Prior to the EasyJet order, Airbus had signed a contract for twelve aircraft with China Airlines, which had also placed an order for ten aircraft with Boeing.

Still, it is not certain that Airbus will want to count the 120 aircraft among its 2002 orders, given the stagnant situation of the world civil aviation sector, and the possible continued drop in orders expected for the early months of 2003.

Even if it decides to record them as orders for 2003, Airbus will still be able to claim that it had already outdistanced Boeing by a total of 5 aircraft for 2002, knowing full well, in that case, that it’s taken a giant’s step ahead for this year’s results.