Flights of destiny

Airbus rethinks the A350 at the Farnborough Air Show, while Boeing eyes the Indian market.

Nose to nose, it's Boeing versus Airbus at the Farnborough airshow, and with the latter trying to out-jumbo the jumbo with the A380, commercial aircraft competition has never been so exciting.

Except that Boeing's 787 Dreamliner is stealing all the attention. The new Airbus chief Christian Streiff has announced that the A350 has been thoroughly rethought in response to the Dreamliner.

Tagged the A350 XWB (which stands for "extra wide body") and slated for a 2012 take-off, it hopes to go one up on Boeing with newer engines, materials, systems, cabins and wide sweep angle.

Boeing, meanwhile, has announced 360 confirmed orders for its all-composite Dreamliner scheduled to fly in 2007. Airbus, though, is not worried about the A350 delay.

"What you get by being a little bit late is that you get to study the competitor and see how you can do better," says John Leahy, Airbus' chief operations officer, customers.

Airbus also claims that the A350 "" to sell in three versions that carry 250-375 passengers "" will be able to fly 15,800 km nonstop at a cruise speed of Mach 0.85, and have the lowest operating cost per seat in this category.

The added advantage, says Airbus, is that the A350 won't just take on the 787, it will also battle two Boeing 777 models (to be specific, the A350-900, to fly first, will compete with the 777-200ER, while the A350-1000 will succeed the A340-600).

The European consortium expects the world's airflight services to order some 4,600 commercial aircraft over the next 20 years, and it cannot afford to let Boeing get the better of it.

Boeing, on the other hand, seems quite confident that its brand associations will help maintain its altitude as market leader. By its estimate, there's a market worth $72.6 billion at stake over 20 years "" a long enough period to turn borders irrelevant even in the emerging markets of Asia.

Air travel is expected to soar in the region. Says Dinesh A Keskar, senior vice-president, Boeing, "The growth in the Indian market has been almost unbelievable in recent years, and we are extremely pleased with the $15-billion in orders from India." Boeing expects India alone to order as many as 852 aircraft "" yes, you read that right "" over the next two decades.

Of these, Boeing expects 79 per cent to be single-aisle aircraft (737s and A320s) and 14 per cent twin-aisle (777s, A350s and A330s), with regional jets making up 6 per cent and jumbo jets (747s and A380s) barely 1 per cent.

Airbus would dispute that, perhaps, given its assumption of flying more-people-per-plane as a way to supply crowded air-travel markets such as India and China (the A380 super-jumbo reasoning). Demand patterns in these two countries (and there's cargo too) are likely to shape the two companies' destiny.

In all, much is still in the air, and there's no saying how exactly the Indian and Chinese markets evolve. The exciting part is that 20 years is long enough for the currently unthinkable to happen live before one's eyes.