Airbus is on track to secure orders for over 50 aircraft in the Middle East and North Africa this year as the industry recovers from a dismal 2009, a senior executive at the European planemaker said. Business with airlines in the region has been picking up since last year when the global economic downturn hit air travel and forced some carriers to scale back expansion plans.
"Experience is showing the fast recovery is there, and it is faster than expected," Habib Fekih, Airbus's president for the Middle East, told Reuters in Cairo. "Traffic is growing, demand is back."
Competition is fierce between Airbus and its US rival Boeing for sales to fast-growing Middle Eastern airlines that have a big appetite for more profitable, long-haul aircraft as they rush to establish global transport hubs.
Toulouse, France-based Airbus, a unit of European aerospace and defence group EADS, received orders for 40 planes from Middle Eastern airlines last year and in January executives were forecasting 2010 orders of 40-50 aircraft.
The outlook has brightened since then and Airbus has already garnered 48 orders this year, although the optimism was tempered by a $3 billion Airbus cancellation by a Dubai lessor last week.
Fekih said Airbus had been working with two scenarios for Middle East and North Africa orders this year, a conservative scenario of around 50 planes and a more bullish hypothesis for 70 to 80 planes.
"I think we still have a chance to do something in between," he said. The cancellation by Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) "is part of normal life for leasing companies. They were ambitious and they are revising their forecasts."
"It's just a small drop in the evolution of the order book, then we will recover before the end of the year."
He shrugged off a decision by Bahrain state carrier Gulf Air to switch some plane orders from wide-body to narrow-body aircraft. "In terms of the volume of business, for us it's just the same," said Fekih. "There is no cancellation, it's a swapping of aircraft types, for example they went from A320s to A319s and some A321s."
Airbus has received orders for 105 of its A380 superjumbo in the region and has delivered 11 of them so far. Fekih said the planemaker was still targeting more customers. "There are two to three airlines in the region that could easily absorb the A380. Egyptair is one, Saudi Arabian Airlines is another. I don't exclude some interest from these customers.