As Boeing reels from crashes, Airbus stays mum about sales gains

The ceremony at the Elysee palace in Paris exuded the full pomp of the French state. Under gilded ceilings dripping with chandeliers, executives of Airbus SE and the agency that buys planes for China’s airlines signed an order worth $35b as French President Emmanuel Macron and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, looked on. Normally, such an event would be full of gloating. In commercial aviation—a zero-sum industry with just two global players, Airbus and Boeing—the rivalry is intense and victories are savored and celebrated. But these aren’t normal times, and the ceremony marking Airbus’s biggest deal in several years was unusually muted. Guillaume Faury, soon to be Airbus’s CEO, was subdued, calling the massive order “a sign of confidence between us and our Chinese partners.” Boeing is mired in a painful investigation following two fatal crashes in just five months of its popular new 737 Max jet, which has since been grounded worldwide. The crisis has shifted the playing field in favour of Airbus at a time that it needs a victory. In February, the company cancelled its A380 double-decker after just a dozen years in service. And its sales force, mired in an investigation into allegations of corruption, has suffered the worst start to the year in at least a decade. Yet Airbus has made it clear it has no intention of taking advantage of the tragedies, and sales staff were told on a conference call that they shouldn’t mention them in their pitches to customers, according to a person who participated. At the Paris signing, Faury declined to comment on what the Boeing grounding might mean for Airbus. And CEO Tom Enders has stressed that this isn’t the time to go after the wounded rival’s business. “When something like that happens, we’re all one big family,” he said at an industry event on March 15. “Safety is not a competition item.”<br/>