Airbus mystery plane set for Farnborough air show

KSUpilot

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Airbus mystery plane set for Farnborough air show
Wednesday July 12, 03:16 PM

LONDON (Reuters) - The year's biggest air show opens near London next week, with all eyes on planemaker Airbus and its secretive plans for an all-new, mid-sized plane to challenge resurgent rival Boeing Co..
The two planemakers waged a feisty battle at the biennial event last time as the biggest winners in $21 billion worth of business deals announced. This year, the France-based company faces mounting pressure to reveal its mystery plane, which analysts say could cost $10 billion to build.
Industry sources and analysts say Airbus's top salesman, John Leahy, will be working hard to sell the concept and could have deals to announce at the Farnborough air show, which opens on Monday.
Airbus has wrestled for more than a year with the design of a model named the A350 which is now likely to be shelved, some analysts believe, as the planemaker responds to calls from would-be buyers for a wider fuselage and other advances.
"It looks increasingly likely to us that Airbus will scrap plans for the A350 aircraft and launch a brand new A370," Credit Suisse analysts wrote in an research report.
Analysts are keen to see how the 10 customers already signed up for the A350 respond to the likely change of course.
Finnair, which has signed up for nine of the A350 model, said this week it was happy to wait longer to get a better plane but was not prepared to pay more for it.
Boeing does not have a 787 flying yet, but the model could cause some excitement if the U.S. planemaker announces it will build a bigger version of it dubbed the 787-10.
If that announcement comes, it is likely to include the name of a launch customer, taking a potential deal away from the new Airbus offering.
Boeing watchers will also be looking for the unidentified customer listed on the planemaker's website as the first buyer of the latest and largest version of the 747 jumbo, the 747-8 Intercontinental.
Boeing has bounced back after losing the orders race to Airbus for five straight years, outselling Airbus 4-to-1 so far this year.

SUPERJUMBO

Airbus will be flying the A380 superjumbo, the subject of a crisis at the planemaker last month after it announced that complications in wiring the mammoth planes would slow deliveries over the next three years.
Leahy has flagged 20 orders for the model by year-end and Farnborough is a likely place to announce at least some of those, analysts say.
Embraer is set to fly its 190 airliner at Farnborough, one of its largest models at 108 seats and part of the Brazilian planemaker's foray into the niche just below the model ranges of Airbus and Boeing.

DEFENCE

On the defence side, Boeing's F-15 and F/A-18 fighters will be on display, as will the Lockheed Martin Corp. F-16, Eurofighter Typhoon, the Gripen from Sweden's Saab and Russia's MiG 29.
Lockheed Martin Corp. will give a briefing on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), which is the subject of some controversy in the UK and elsewhere as governments demand work and technology from the $276.5 billion project before committing to big orders for the futuristic fighter plane.
Raytheon will show off Britain's newest spyplane, the Sentinel R1, which adds a sophisticated radar system to a Bombardier Global Express business jet.
Spyplanes and combat jets without pilots, called UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and UCAVs (unmanned combat aerial vehicles), will also be on display.
Italy's Alenia Aeronautica will display its Sky-X UCAV and Europe's biggest defence company, BAE Systems of Britain, which revealed its UAV/UCAV programme in February, is expected to give more details on its work.
The U.S. Air Force will be flying several aircraft at the show, including its B-52 Stratofortress, a massive, eight-engined bomber.
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Rather interesting development as I have been reading several articles on the A350. This should be an interesting battle if Boeing announces the 787-10 (which they probably will) The A350 was going to use composites, but nowhere near as much as the 787. I wonder if they will embrace composites with the A370 and use as much as the 787.
The A350 was an attempt for them to simply catch up to the 787, and it seemed like it was going to fall short. If Airbus is going with an entirely new idea, it seems they will try to surpass the 787. I guess we will see in the next few weeks if that will be possible.

My prediction: There will be a lot of initial fanfare surrounding the A370 and many will wonder if Boeing will still stay ahead. Boeing will announce the 787-10 and still come out ahead of Airbus. The recent fallback with the A380 has hurt them, and I see more airlines going with the 787 than the A370.