News From Paris UPDATE 5

It's a wrap, folks.

As usual, all is confusion when attempting to summarize what got sold by Airbus at the Big Show. The only numbers of interest to me here are for the A380 and the A350. The other lines are selling well enough, no news there.

Here it is as best I can figure, subject of course to change:

A380:
3-Qatar, firm order
8-Emirates, memorandum of understanding
2-Air France, memorandum of understanding

A350:
80-Qatar, firm order
22-US Airways, firm order, 20 conversions of previous type order
22-Aeroflot, firm order
12-ALAFCO firm order, conversion of previous type order
15-Kingfisher, memorandum of understanding, conversion of previous type order (could be another 5 here according to Aviation Week)
6-Afriqiyah, memorandum of understanding
4- Libyan, memorandum of understanding
7-CIT, firm order, conversion of previous type order
20-Singapore, firm order

How this breaks out is that 39 firm orders are conversions from the old order book and 15 MOUs are conversions from the old order book. The total of firm orders looks like 163, more or less, and the number of provisionals look like 25.

A good week's work for the Airbus sales force, although collaring only 3 orders for the A380 is not a vindication of the type or any predictor of its eventual success.

The future of that program remains problematic, and it is still an open question whether the entry into service of the lone Singapore aircraft in October will prove to be so revolutionary an event as to sway many potential buyers who are not yet committed. Quite simply, those in the know already know what the capabilities and infirmities of this aircraft are, and they stayed away in droves in Paris.

Now all the worker bees have to do is build and deliver the airplanes to the customers, and do it on time and on budget.

I will now have the crow, please, but only a child's portion.