After receiving record orders in recent years, Airbus says it expects orders for new planes this year to drop by half from last year amid slower global growth.
John Leahy, Airbus' chief salesman, said at the Singapore Airshow on Tuesday that the European planemaker is likely to sell about 700 planes this year, down from more than 1,400 orders last year.
"The market, in terms of new orders, will be going down," Leahy told a press briefing. "We have a record backlog so I would expect to see fewer and fewer orders as the market does cool off a bit."
"By definition, the whole world is cooling down a little bit," Leahy said.
The 700 planes that Toulouse, France-based Airbus wants to sell will include more than a hundred A350s, a redesigned widebody 300-seat jet, and about 30 units of the A380, the world's largest commercial jet. Korean Air Lines Co said on Monday it would buy three more double-decker A380s on top of its existing order for five of the world's biggest commercial jets.
Leahy said that orders for planes had peaked in the past three years and manufacturers were now ramping up production to deliver them.
Airbus has about 3,600 planes in its order backlog, he said, about the same number as its US rival, Boeing.
Together, the rivals won a record 2,754 orders last year.
The biggest challenge the companies face is getting planes off their production lines fast enough to meet demand. At the end of last year, the two companies together had enough airplanes on order to keep their factories busy for about five to six years.
Both companies have faced delays in deliveries. Airbus's first A380 was delivered nearly two years late last fall -- a delay that slashed profits at parent company EADS.
Chicago-based Boeing last month said the inaugural flight for the 787 would be delayed up to three months, pushing delivery of the first plane into early next year -- the third time the airplane has been delayed.
Airbus chief executive Tom Enders said his company was learning from the mistakes that caused the A380's delay and that it was making improvements in integrating production processes.
"We're taking quite a few lessons from our own failures on the 380," Enders said.
"The core of that problem was the missing thorough integration of processes inside Airbus," he said. "We have changed that already in the last two years ... and we're on our way to improving them further."
Enders said Airbus was studying the production problems that Boeing currently faces with its supply chain and slow progress on the assembly line, but said he was confident both companies' supply chains were up to par.
"I'm sure that Boeing has taken some lessons from our failures. We are in turn studying carefully what we should take from their problems on the 787," he said. "For supply chain to come to that point is a major concern."
"But we believe we have every reason to assume that our supply chain ... can match the ramp up that we and our competitor have ahead of us," Enders said.
Super Typhoon Kong-rey is the largest cyclone to impact Taiwan in 27 years, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said today. Kong-rey’s radius of maximum wind (RMW) — the distance between the center of a cyclone and its band of strongest winds — has expanded to 320km, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. The last time a typhoon of comparable strength with an RMW larger than 300km made landfall in Taiwan was Typhoon Herb in 1996, he said. Herb made landfall between Keelung and Suao (蘇澳) in Yilan County with an RMW of 350km, Chang said. The weather station in Alishan (阿里山) recorded 1.09m of
NO WORK, CLASS: President William Lai urged people in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert, with Typhoon Kong-rey approaching Typhoon Kong-rey is expected to make landfall on Taiwan’s east coast today, with work and classes canceled nationwide. Packing gusts of nearly 300kph, the storm yesterday intensified into a typhoon and was expected to gain even more strength before hitting Taitung County, the US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center said. The storm is forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The CWA labeled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful on its scale. Up to 1.2m of rainfall was expected in mountainous areas of eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday at 5:30pm issued a sea warning for Typhoon Kong-rey as the storm drew closer to the east coast. As of 8pm yesterday, the storm was 670km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) and traveling northwest at 12kph to 16kph. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 162kph and gusts of up to 198kph, the CWA said. A land warning might be issued this morning for the storm, which is expected to have the strongest impact on Taiwan from tonight to early Friday morning, the agency said. Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) and Green Island (綠島) canceled classes and work
KONG-REY: A woman was killed in a vehicle hit by a tree, while 205 people were injured as the storm moved across the nation and entered the Taiwan Strait Typhoon Kong-rey slammed into Taiwan yesterday as one of the biggest storms to hit the nation in decades, whipping up 10m waves, triggering floods and claiming at least one life. Kong-rey made landfall in Taitung County’s Chenggong Township (成功) at 1:40pm, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The typhoon — the first in Taiwan’s history to make landfall after mid-October — was moving north-northwest at 21kph when it hit land, CWA data showed. The fast-moving storm was packing maximum sustained winds of 184kph, with gusts of up to 227kph, CWA data showed. It was the same strength as Typhoon Gaemi, which was the most
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