<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by AC_flyer:
Options still do carry some weight as prices are usually guranteed and there is a fee for it.
With regards to Embraer, they also say their firm order get halved... Swiss basically cannot afford the full order. It was an outright cancellation of both firm orders and options.. That hurts.
With the IB, there was no order placed until today.. So 5 planes is still better than zero. Order book infact grew by 5 aircraft..</font>
I'm not sure there - the deal was publicly announced, could be I miscounted the previous smaller 340's that werre committed and from what I can tell from the February Airbus ODO, it looks like they were counted in the totals:
AIRBUS Region A318 A319 A320 A321 A300 A310 A330 A340 A380 TOTAL
Iberia E 4 59 47 58 16 7 7 6 6 21 18 18 102 78 87
Anyway, no one is paying for options right now, not even on the 345's and 6's from what I can see.
Edit: Your are right: the 340's show 21/18/18, so the new order wasn't in the ODO, but it was still nailed down on the premise of a bigger deal than Airbus now has in hand. I do think that the carriers you mentioned are more than willing to see their planes arrive a bit later than planned, but that's just me.
[This message has been edited by msn (edited 04-05-2003).]