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Sleek fighter jets roared and wheeled over the English countryside last week as the world’s major aerospace contractors showed off their wares at the biennial Farnborough Air Show. But the real dogfight was on the ground, between two huge planes that so far exist only on paper. Europe’s Airbus Industrie and America’s Boeing Co. fired off repeated rounds of press releases, boasts and accusations trying to boost support for their rival versions of a new 550-passenger superjumbo jet to succeed Boeing’s venerable 747 as the king of the skies. Though neither machine would fly before the next century, marketing and hype for Airbus’ A3XX and Boeing’s 747-600X are already at full throttle. Nonetheless, both investments are risky, and even the fruits of victory are unsure: for all the glamour and prestige of a superjumbo, the market may not be large enough for either planemaker to recoup the development costs. "Somebody could lose a lot of money on this plane," warns Allan Winn, editor of Flight International, a trade publication.
Which doesn’t mean there isn’t profit to be made as well. While only 7% of new passenger planes sold over the next 20 years will be as big as or bigger than the current 416-seat 747-400, according to Boeing estimates, such aircraft will account for nearly a fifth of the $1.1 trillion spent on new equipment. For Airbus, the four-nation European consortium, the lure is especially strong. It desperately needs a big plane to match the 747, which for 26 years has been a lucrative Boeing monopoly.
That do-or-die attitude helps explain Airbus’ more daring entry in the superjumbo contest. The 555-passenger A3XX will be a two-deck, twin-aisle behemoth whose smaller upper section alone will be nearly as big as the entire passenger cabin of the A340, currently the largest plane in the Airbus fleet. A later version could be stretched to hold 650 passengers, and Airbus officials claim the plane will be roomy enough for airlines to add a conference room, a mini-gym or even a few sleeping compartments on the lower level if they wish. "We’re starting from a clean sheet of paper," says John Leahy, Airbus’ senior vice president for sales and marketing.
Boeing’s entry looks like a 747, only more so. The 548-passenger 747- 600X would keep the same fuselage width but extend it 14 meters, to 85 meters, nearly as long as a minimum-size soccer field. Boeing will team it with a longer-range 460-passenger version, the 747-500X, which will have a range of 16,100 km, 2,600 farther than the 747-400. The plane will feature a new, more efficient wing, and engineers will replace the 747’s traditional mechanical controls with a computerized fly-by-wire system, pioneered in commercial aircraft by Airbus and used for the first time by Boeing in the hugely popular wide-bodied 777.
Though it is entering the 21st century with an updated 1960s design, Boeing gains a key advantage: it can start delivering the 747-600X by the year 2000, at least three years before the A3XX will be ready. In recent months company salesmen have been pounding the tarmac in Europe, Asia and America, trying to nail down enough firm commitments from major airlines to justify a formal launch of the project. Boeing hopes that by beating its archrival into the air, it will garner enough orders to keep the A3XX, also as yet without a formal go-ahead, stranded on the runway.
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