Airbus year-end order rush masks woes selling biggest jets

Airbus completed the year doing what it does best: selling its bread-and-butter narrow-body aircraft. The manufacturer Thursday firmed up its biggest-ever order from Indigo Partners for 430 A320 aircraft -- a contract that was previously announced -- while also unveiling a new deal for 50 re-engined versions of the same jet. All told, the flurry of activity during the past two weeks has totaled 705 single-aisle plane orders with a sticker price of $81.5b, pushing its full-year tally ahead of the figure at rival Boeing Co. The A320’s success, coming in the final days of retiring sales chief John Leahy’s two-decade tenure, provides some respite for Airbus following a tumultuous few weeks after the planemaker unveiled a top management shakeup. The orders for smaller jets also expose the flank that’s opened up at the other end of the manufacturer’s product line-up: wide-body and ultra large jumbos that are becoming increasingly hard to sell. The final burst of deals pushed Airbus’s net new orders for the year to just beyond 1,000 planes, including 48 wide-bodies. The company was expecting the total to lag behind the 700 or so aircraft it planned to deliver in 2017. At Boeing, net orders for single- and twin-aisle models amounted to 844 planes as of Dec. 19, and the US company hasn’t announced any sales contracts since then. Airbus also confirmed late Thursday that an event scheduled for this week to mark the delivery to Qatar Airways of its first A350-1000 twin-aisle plane will be delayed until early in the new year as the aircraft undergoes final preparations. <br/>