Paris Air Show
Aerospace |
|
Day One
- The Big News The first day of the Paris Air Show is historically reserved for the press. It is the day when the French President officially opens the show and the press meets with the industry before the show swings into high gear.
Yesterday was no exception. The big news at the Paris Air Show was not the order announcement of orders for two more Boeing Business Jets. Although that brings the order total to 20, a fairly healthy start for the program to market next generation 737s as private business aircraft, the order is worth only $60 million to Boeing. Not shabby, just not Paris. Okay, maybe the big news is Allied-Signal's $550 million in orders, or that Litton will shy away from future defense business and concentrate on commercial information technologies, primarily growing through acquisition or that Dassault is looking to future partnerships, including the United States, Taiwan, Britain and Germany. The big news was the timing of orders announced earlier this week. Before the world's premier aerospace exhibition even started. The $3 billion Continental Airlines order to Boeing happened on Tuesday. Even though Boeing hasn't officially announced it, Continental has. There goes the element of surprise. Oh well, the mystery was pretty well gone on that deal, anyway. The almost $1.7 billion Atlas order to Boeing for 747s happened on Monday. Atlas has been on a roll lately, and the potential for this order was being whispered about in cargo aircraft circles for several months. Again, no mystery, but the timing for the announcement certainly was. The American order for seven 777s. The EasyJet order for 12 737s. All announced by customers before the Air Show. Now, quite likely Boeing will make some to-do about the orders during Le Bourget. But, the cat is out of the bag, as they say. And the question that all of this begs is simply this, has the gilding gone off of the Paris lily? Is the world's major air show no longer the stage at which major orders will be announced? Perhaps not. But for this year's show, the timing of several new business
deals seems quite unusual. |
