Boeing (NYSE:BA) Needs To Come Up With Something, And It Needs To Be Fast- Airbus Delivered Its First A350 XWB

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By Chris Hillman on December 26, 2014 Company

The jet market is about to change, for Airbus has delivered its first ever A350 XWB in to the market. The model has been shipped for Qatar Airways. According to market analysts and the experts in the industry, with the delivery of this model, the start of a never-ending war between Boeing (NYSE:BA) and Airbus has been marked. News has it that Airbus built this model from scratch in order to gain aviation space in the wide body airplanes market. The area is dominated by Boeing (NSYE: BA). Boeing, head-quartered in Chicago, beat Airbus in this race when it launched its 787 Dreamliner way before the start of the race. However, now that Airbus has also released its latest model, chances are that the commercial airplane segment will not be dominated by Boeing.

Let’s talk about Dreamliner for a bit. Boeing (NYSE:BA) launched this model into the market back in the year 2011. The model was delayed for 4 years due to a number of issues that the company was facing. Ever since the company launched Dreamliner, it has been bagging lots of contracts. According to one estimate, the company has gotten around 1,000 orders for this plane.

Following the success of Dreamliner 787, Airbus wanted to design a model that would be able to compete against the latest model of Boeing. The European airplane company started its project on A-350 in order to overcome the shortcomings that its A-330 had. After several years of efforts, the company finally pulled out a design for its A350 XWB. As soon as the airline companies across the globe heard of a competing jet, they were quick in placing their orders for A-350. According to the company, Airbus has received 750 orders for its A-350 XWB from 41 different clients.

According to the chief executive of Qatar Airways, Akbar Al Baker, what makes Airbus’ A-350 more attractive than Boeing’s Dreamliner is the fact that the jet is 25 percent more efficient when it comes to fuel consumption. The CEO further said that the costs of airline’s operations would go down by a huge figure due to this plus point. The costs of fuel is responsible for making up around 30 percent of the total operational costs of an airline, a fuel efficient jet would mean that the company will be seeing a reduction in its costs for years to come. Perhaps this is the reason why so many airlines have placed orders for A-350.

Now that Airbus and Boeing have their jets on the runway, the competition between both the rivals has gotten stiff. The monopoly which Boeing was enjoying, over carbon-composited airplanes, has come to an end. In order for Boeing to restore its dominant position in the commercial segment, the company needs to either come up with a new model or it has to make improvements in its Dreamliner. It is important to mention here that Dreamliner is having some problems, especially the wing cracks and batter fires.