Al Root
Airbus is winning the order battle with Boeing in Paris. That isn't helping Airbus stock, though.
Airbus announced an agreement Tuesday for 100 A321neo planes from Vietnam's VietJet Aviation. The deal is a memorandum of understanding "covering a major new order for 100 single-aisle A321neo aircraft, with the potential to add another 50 in the future."
VietJet has an all-Airbus fleet of large airliners.
The announcement adds to agreements with ANA, LOT Polish Airlines, Riyadh Air, and AviLease.
The VietJet announcement brings the Airbus total to about 380 jets, including all orders, options, and potential purchases.
Airbus stock, however, was down 0.8% in overseas trading at EUR160.78. The S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each were down 0.3%.
Orders are great. They just aren't as important as they once were, though. Airbus' backlog of undelivered orders approaches 8,700 planes. That's more than a decade of sales at current build rates.
The challenge for Airbus, and its peer Boeing, is to build more planes. Ramping up production has been difficult since Covid-19 roiled aerospace-supply chains.
Boeing, for its part, hasn't announced any large orders at the show. That could be out of respect for the victims of the Air India Boeing 787 that crashed on June 12, tragically killing more than 275 people, including 241 of the 242 onboard the aircraft.
The plane was a 12-year-old Boeing 787, powered by GE Aerospace GEnx engines, that had accumulated 41,700 flight hours over 7,800 flights. Before Thursday, the twin-aisle 787 jet, introduced in 2011, had never been involved in a fatal crash.
Boeing stock was rising slightly to $201.39. Coming into Tuesday, shares had lost about 6% since the crash.
Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com
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June 17, 2025 09:51 ET (13:51 GMT)
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