A Happy New Year? The Airbus A320

摘要

It's quite possible that even Airbus didn't fully grasp what it was unleashing when it officially launched the A320neo in December 2010. At the time, it has to be said, there was no shortage of people willing to suggest that Airbus was risking compromising the value of a highly-successful design that had been accumulating orders since it was launched in the late 1980s. Yet the neo - standing for new engine option - has now become the best-selling airliner in commercial aviation history with over 2,400 sales racked up in three years. And, thanks to careful management of the price differential, the baseline variant is still attracting orders. "So far," an Airbus spokesman told AIR International in mid-November, "we've achieved 2,487 neo sales from 44 customers." In fact, the neo now accounts for 28% of the sales backlog for narrowbody airliners compared with 22% for the ceo -current engine option - and its biggest rival, Boeing's 737 MAX, which has 18%. The 737NG, however, accounts for 25%.