The Dreamliner’s Competition Just Isn’t Selling

Europe is trying to compete with the Boeing Dreamliner by offering a new plane – the Airbus A330neo – but is having trouble matching Boeing’s sales numbers. The CEO of Airbus America has a few ideas about why this might be, including a slow market and airlines not hitting a replacement cycle yet in the life of their planes.

When Airbus launched the A330neo in 2014, it was meant as a response to Boeing’s wildly popular 787 Dreamliner jet. But the Dreamliners were new aircraft, and instead of starting fresh, Airbus decided to optimize and refit A330ceo planes that have been in flight since the 90s. Since that time, Airbus has sold only 224 planes, compared to Boeing’s 400 or so.

Airbus America’s new CEO thinks he might know why the A330neos aren’t selling as anticipated.

“The widebody market, in general, has been slower over the past year or two and some of that can be attributed to the replacement cycle,” Jeff Knittel, the CEO, told Business Insider.

Plus, the A330ceo aircraft is still for sale, and many airlines haven’t seen fit to replace them yet.

“When you have airplanes that are older, the analysis to flip them out and put in new airplanes is much easier and in most cases fairly obvious,” Knittel told Business Insider. “But the A330ceo is a good airplane with good range and has been improved a lot over the past 10 years. As the replacement cycles come and as the A330neo enters peoples’ fleets, I think you will see sales accelerate on that airplane because they will see that (the neo) is a fundamentally improved aircraft over what was already a very good aircraft, to begin with.”

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