Boeing Takes Poke at Airbus' A380 Sales Propjections
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Airbus A380
Source: FedEx
MANCHESTER, UK - The Guardian has reported that Boeing's commercial aircraft marketing chief has taken a swipe at Airbus' forecast of 1,138 sales of its super jumbo, 555-passenger A380 transport. Randy Baseler not only stated a "best case" estimate of a mere 320 sales, but added that the consortium might not even sell enough A380s to repay $3.5-billion loaned it by several European governments to launch the program. According to the Guardian Baseler went on to note that Airbus offered customers for the initial 129 A380s a discount of 40 percent on the aircraft's $230-million list price. He also said he doubted Airbus would break even with 250 orders. Forecast International has projected deliveries of 190 of the big A380s from early 2007 through 2013. The new four-engined Airbus model will be powered by Engine Alliance (Pratt & Whitney and GE) GP7200 or Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, at the customer's choice, and these will each deliver about 80,000 lbst.
Source: Forecast International
Source Date: March 26, 2004
Author: Bill Dane
Posted: 03/30/2004