Paris Air Show Lands on an Optimistic Note
While growth in demand for commercial aviation is likely to slow, no one was panicking. Plus more industrial insights.
The weather and outlook were on the sunny side.
Photographer: Benoit Tessier/AFP/Getty Images
Clouds of worry have been gathering over the commercial aviation industry, but the sun was shining in Paris this week as planemakers and suppliers gathered for the biennial Air Show.
I mean that both literally — it was hot — and figuratively, with every executive I talked to adopting the same tone of cautious optimism. They conceded the market is slowing: Amid sputtering air traffic growth, weakening airline profits and a slowing global economy, orders at the Paris Air Show trailed the tally from last year’s Farnborough Air Show on both a unit and dollar basis, according to an analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence’s George Ferguson and Francois Duflot. And the orders that were announced weren’t always written in stone. Vertical Research Partners analyst Rob Stallard counted about 610 commitments for new planes between Boeing Co. and Airbus SE (short of his forecast for 800), but only about 160 of those are firm orders for large aircraft and all of those belong to Airbus.1 Some orders for Airbus’s new A321XLR — a longer-range version of its top-selling narrow-body jet that was unveiled as expected this week — were converted from existing commitments for previous A320-family models. But there were orders, including a surprise bid from British Airways parent IAG SA for Boeing’s embattled 737 Max jets (more on that later). While everyone no doubt would have preferred a stronger showing, no one was panicking, either.