Airbus's new plane could spell trouble for Boeing’s own plans to fill the middle of the market
BOEING, AN American aerospace giant, had once hoped that it would have a good week at this year’s Paris Air Show, which ends on June 23rd. It was expected to launch the 797, a new mid-sized jet to fill the gap in its range between its smaller 737 narrow-body airliner and its much larger 787 and 777 wide-body jets. But instead it was Airbus, its European arch-rival, that launched a plane that fitted this criteria.
The A321XLR is a plane “that is of interest to the entire world,” says Francois Caudron, a marketing boss at Airbus. He says the demand for the proposed jet came from airlines flying previous A321 models, which had a range of about 4,000 miles. “The market, asked us, ‘With the A321 now, we can fly from the East Coast of the United States into Europe, but we can’t really go deep into Europe. We can’t go to Rome.
Much has been made of Boeing’s other troubles for the postponement of the 797’s launch. It is true that the continued grounding of its 737 MAX planes, due to safety worries following two crashes of the type in Ethiopia and Indonesia that killed 346 people, does not help. But even before the 737 MAX’s problems, the business case for the 797 was already weak.
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