Friday, January 17, 2014

Slideshow: New Airbus price changes comparison with Boeing

Fresh off a record year, Airbus this week announced new prices on its line of passenger jets, raising them by an average of 2.6 percent based on its standard escalation formula.

Airbus' prices were already higher than rival Boeing's on most comparable aircraft, a gap that now widens from where it was when Boeing raised its prices in August 2013.

Airbus COO of Customers John Leahy said in a press release that the new pricing "reaffirms the unbeatable value of Airbus' modern, fuel-efficient aircraft family."

Fuel is an airline's biggest expenditure, so the operating cost over time has to be factored into what they are willing to pay for an aircraft.

We'll leave fuel-efficiency claims for another day and for now focus on just the listed Best Deals of comparable aircraft.

Boeing, it should be noted, also had a record year in 2013 in terms of both deliveries and total backlog.

It bested Airbus on deliveries - 648 to 626 - while Airbus held the edge in backlog with 5,559 unfilled orders to Boeing's 5,080.

Airbus also came out ahead in terms of net orders, 1,503 to 1,355.

Those numbers all show increasing demand for both company's passenger jets, many of which carry Wichita-built or designed components.

So, click through the adjoining slideshow to see how some of Boeing's average prices compare to the new prices from Airbus. Seating capacity can vary depending on the layout of the aircraft. Where available, this comparison lists capacity in a typical two-class layout.

Both companies list their average prices on their websites, though customers typically buy aircraft from both at discounted prices.

You can also take a look back here to see what those Airbus prices were before.

Daniel McCoy covers aviation, manufacturing and automotive.

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