[djwright]

Boeing's order from China was also for 150 airplanes. 70 of those were counted as firm orders. But I think if you can find Boeing's breakdown they didn't even include those in the total. So if you add the 70 firm China orders Boeing regains the lead.

Justplanes.com tracks these things form announced orders. They didn't include the China order in either Airbus or Boeing's totals and they had Boeing winning 1034 to 812. http://www.justplanes.com/orders.htm

So how did Airbus go from 687 at the end of November to over 1000 without announcing any major orders? Easy they turned over the counting to the King County Elections office.

So they can claim a short term victory but don't let them get away with counting that China order 2 or three times.

BTW United just delayed 42 A320s until after 2011.

[Turbopilot]

I'd thought the 737 order from China was bigger, but I couldn't find a source to quote so I went with the Boeing number. Your info makes sense.

As far as United goes, I've found it funny that United, which is a spinoff of the same parent company that spun off Boeing, is buying Airbus. It would be kind of like a Ford executive buying a Cadillac.

I think Airbus came up by several hundred airframes by "enticing" (read: giving away airplanes) small/nonexistent startups to take A32x instead of 737 models. It's also entirely possible that the 2.5 week delay on their part was based in part on Airbus waiting to hear the Boeing numbers, and then retroactively signing contracts on whatever terms they could get in order to beat the Boeing numbers. When your development costs are fully covered by taxpayers, you can do a lot more to book business.