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Buyer patience put to test

Airbus and Boeing pulled in $129 billion in fresh business at the Paris Air Show with orders for 848 aircraft, straining their production lines as much as the patience of buyers forced to wait years for their jets.

Airbus moved ahead with deals for 466 planes worth $69 billion, edging out Boeing’s haul of 382 aircraft valued at $60 billion. The value at list price exceeded that of last year’s aviation expo in Farnborough in the UK, where the two combined for about $53 billion.

While Airbus struck an upbeat note at its round-up Press conference, saying its 2013 targets were all but clinched, some buyers are showing less enthusiasm at the prospect of the bulging backlog. Qatar Airways chief executive officer Akbar Al Baker said he’s pushing Boeing to move him up in line to get more Dreamliners before 2020.

“It’s difficult,” Al Baker said of the prospects of converting into firm orders the options he has on the plane. “It’s a very hot-selling item. If they give us slots next decade we will not be interested.”

The manufacturers are boosting production to respond to the risk of longer delivery times, with Airbus saying it would go to 50 A320neos, a re-engined version of the single-aisle jet, a month by 2020 from 42. Boeing is increasing single-aisle monthly output to 42 by 2014 from 35 last year. At the same time, their ability to lift output further is being stymied by a strain on suppliers.

“People are frustrated they can’t get earlier delivery slots,” John Leahy, the Airbus sales chief, said in Paris. Customers wanting the newest planes — the re-engined version of Airbus’s best-selling A320, and the A350 wide-body — now have to wait until 2020.

Carriers looking to buy a 787 Dreamliner or a 737 narrow-body also need patience toward the end of the decade to take delivery, said Randy Tinseth, marketing vice-president for commercial airplanes at Boeing.

Based on the number of orders and deliveries, Airbus’s first-quarter book-to-bill ratio on narrow-body jets was the highest since September 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Boeing’s backlog of unfilled orders for twin-aisle jetliners, which can cost three times as much as single-aisle aircraft, totalled 1,281 planes through May, compared with 1,031 for Airbus. The tallies were even larger for the smaller models: 3,253 for Boeing versus 3,850 for Airbus, the data show.

The trove of orders is translating into higher stock prices, with shares of both planemakers trouncing equity benchmarks in their home markets. Airbus parent European Aeronautic, Defence & Space has surged 40 per cent this year, the biggest gain in France’s CAC 40 Index, while Boeing’s 32 per cent advance is almost triple the 11 per cent increase in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

Boeing secured commitments in Paris for 125 long-range planes, where margins are higher. That compares with 95 for Airbus, even as the European planemaker continued its success in the larger single-aisle plane market, securing 61 percent of the market for the upgraded narrow-body aircraft.