Originally Posted by
The Lev
Not necessarily - keep in mind most of these birds will be leased from leasing companies, so the early time slots are probably coming from lessors who had already place "spec" orders with Airbus with later slots and options being bought direct from Airbus.
It's also quite possible that AC worked out a deal with Airbus to take QR's slots and then brought in the lessors to finance the planes.
I don't know the inner workings of the deal, just wouldn't read anything in to the fact that lessors are involved.