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2-3 years ago, Boeing was bumped into second place by Airbus. The slump in air travel lingered in North America longer than in Europe after 9/11, and Airbus was getting lots of interest in the A380 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A380), which essentially would be like the 744 with a full second deck. Things did not look good for Boeing.

This year, Boeing has three times the sales than Airbus. Part of the reason is European politics encourages multiple heads - bad for a good chain of command. I'll dwell on the other reason - rising fuel prices.

Sales of the Boeing 737 must be up, even though I don't have an article saying such. What I do know is the 787 Dreamliner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787) is a hit because it's considerably more fuel efficient than other medium-sized jetliners. It has long range, able to fly most anywhere non-stop (8,500 miles). It uses carbon fiber extensively.

The A380 is intended to haul 500-800 passengers, but it's more likely it would fly hub-to-hub instead of direct. The trend is for direct flights. There have been a number of production delays in the A380 as well.

Fuel prices drove airliners to pick the 787 over the A380. If I'm not mistaken, Arizona has a lot of mothballed old airliners in the desert, waiting for other nations to buy them. These airliners were abandoned by bankrupt companies or were shed in favor of newer, more fuel-efficient airliners.

On other forums, it was interesting to figure which takes less fuel - flying or driving. Recall that some wide-bodied jetliners could get 90mpg if fully loaded.

Technically Boeing had 3 times the orders, I believe Airbus still delivered, and thus was paid, for more aircraft than Boeing so far. Of course, orders are what tells us what their financial situation will be a few years from now, and things indeed do not look good for the Frenchies.

On the topic of passenger miles per gallon, ground transport still tends to have the advantage. Even your garden variety Hyundai Elantra that gets 32mpg on the highway with 4 people and their bags is getting 128 pmpg. Busses and rail are competitive too, although airlines of course have everyone absolutely destroyed in terms of the time savings, plus often times they'll still beat ground transport by nature of direct routing instead of ground miles. For example it's 960 ground miles for me to drive to my sister's house, but only a 500 mile flight.

I'm glad to see there is still good competition in the airliner industry, to be honest. A few years ago, everyone thought Airbus was on the verge of putting Boeing out of business. Now the worries are Boeing will make Airbus obsolete. It's a huge swing shift, but at least there is a swing at all. I wish the PC industry had such swings, rather than the massive dominance of Microsoft/Intel over their competition, for example.

....everyone thought Airbus was on the verge of putting Boeing out of business. Now the worries are Boeing will make Airbus obsolete. It's a huge swing shift, but at least there is a swing at all. I wish the PC industry had such swings, rather than the massive dominance of Microsoft/Intel over their competition, for example.

Ironically, at one time I was wishing Bill Gates would run Boeing. :D

Check out Plane market 'to see huge growth' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5175010.stm) (BBC)