Word: a380
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...Harry Stonecipher spent last Christmas at his St. Petersburg, Fla., home. He wasn't happy about that. Angered because key airlines like AirAsia and Air Berlin were buying rival Airbus planes, all too aware that the European manufacturer would soon be rolling out its new 555-seat, double-decker A380 jumbo liner, Stonecipher had told his salespeople he would travel anywhere in the world, even on Christmas Day, if he was needed to close a deal. Yet no one called. "The whole idea is that I will go anywhere for them," he says...
Stonecipher stayed home last month too when five European leaders, 12 airline CEOs, scores of journalists and more than 5,000 invited guests gathered at Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, France, to celebrate the unveiling of the A380, which cost $12 billion to launch. The roll-out of the world's largest passenger plane is a powerful symbol of the coming of age of 35-year-old Airbus and underscores that the world's two major commercial-airplane makers--Airbus and Boeing--are at each other's throats as never before. Although the U.S. government and the European Union reached...
...A380 is Airbus' prized 21st century showpiece. The plane, which has a list price of $285 million (though airlines rarely pay the published rate on any plane), has been ordered by major airlines around the world, including Air France, Emirates, Lufthansa, Qantas and Virgin. Last month UPS joined FedEx as the second U.S. cargo airline to buy the freighter version. "The A380 is the most significant event in aviation in 40 years--since the introduction of the Boeing 747," says Stephen Forshaw of Singapore Airlines, which will be the first airline to fly the aircraft, in the spring...
...plane are enormous, with little guarantee that the market will reward innovation. In December 2003 Boeing announced plans for the twin- engine, highly efficient 787 (originally called the 7E7), its first new airplane in a decade and its designated aircraft of the future. In contrast to the A380, which is designed to fly lots of people to big hub airports, the smaller (about 220 passengers) 787 aims to fly longer distances to more cities. Scheduled to roll out in 2007 and fly commercially in 2008, the 787 will cost an estimated $9 billion to launch...
...baffling. At first, Forgeard was quoted as dismissing Boeing's new plane as a "Chinese copy" of Airbus' similar A330. But last December, Airbus abruptly shifted and said it would build a derivative plane called the A350. Boeing spins the A350 as a sign of lost confidence in the A380. In an interview last month, Boeing's Stonecipher pointed to another European government-backed plane that never made a profit and has been grounded. "The A380 is a great engineering success, but so was the Concorde. The A380 could be a market disaster," he said. Analyst Richard Aboulafia of Virginia...