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Airbus unveils A3XX sales
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July 24, 2000: 6:49 a.m. ET
Air France, Emirates order up to 22 'superjumbo' jets worth $4.8B
By Staff Writer Abid Ali
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FARNBOROUGH, ENGLAND (CNNfn) - Airbus Industrie fired the first shots in a trans-Atlantic battle for dominance in the jumbo jetliner market Monday, unveiling $4.8 billion of orders for the A3XX from Air France and Emirates, the first confirmed customers for the 555-seat airliner it is developing.
At a news conference at Britain's Farnborough International Airshow for the world's aerospace industry, the European aircraft maker's chief executive predicted a welter of further orders for Airbus, the only serious rival to Boeing Co. (BA: Research, Estimates) of the United States.
 "In the first six months (of this year) we sold 239 aircraft - this will increase dramatically during this week with about 200 additional airplane orders," Airbus Industrie CEO Noel Forgeard said at a press conference.
Dubai's Emirates airline placed an order for five A3XX passenger planes and took options to buy another five, and ordered another two as cargo carriers, Airbus said. The total value of the sale would be $2.5 billion if Emirates takes up all the options, said a person familiar with the agreement. The planes will be powered by engines made by Rolls Royce Plc (RR-).
Air France, meanwhile, has ordered ten A3XX planes for a total of $2.3 billion. Media reports have said Singapore Airlines is also close to placing an order.
And as a foretaste of the sales of other Airbus planes that Forgeard predicted he would unveil in the coming days, the European manufacturer said Monday that U.S. financial-services company CIT Group placed an order for 35 narrow-bodied A320 jets and 15 A330s.
Airbus sees the A3XX as its main weapon in the fight to break Boeing's 30-year dominance in the market for planes with more than 300 seats, where the U.S. company's 747 jumbo has long had the field almost to itself. The European plan maker's owners, the European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. and Britain's BAE Systems PLC (BA-), last month agreed to turn the consortium of manufacturers into a limited company, called Airbus Integrated Co.
Enough demand for superjumbo?
The double-deck A3XX is expected to cost $12 billion to develop, and has provoked debate in the airline industry over whether such a huge plane is viable. Airbus has said nine customers, including leasing firm International Lease Finance Co., Air France SA and Singapore Airlines have indicated their interest in buying the plane.
 Airbus sees a market for 1,200 aircraft with more than 400 seats over the next 15 years, while Boeing estimates demand at just a third of that level.
Boeing Co. expects to start developing its proposed 747X superjumbo airliner in six to nine months, spending about $4 billion on the project
Airbus Industrie had sales of $16.3 billion in 1999 and received orders valued at $30.7 billion. Analysts have valued the company at around $25 billion. Turning the consortium into a stand-alone should boost the planemaker's access to financial markets and support efforts to cut costs and improve efficiency. industry experts have said. The partners plan to cut  329 million a year from operating costs.
The European Aeronautic, Defense and Space Co., Europe's largest aerospace company, formed by the three-way merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DaimlerChrysler AG's (FDCX) Dasa aerospace unit, and Spain's Construcciones Aeronauticas SA, or Casa, owns 80 percent of Airbus. BAE Systems PLC (BA-) owns 20 percent. 
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