The 787 has swept Asia, including India and Australia. That vaunted Qatar order (not blue chip, but at least big) hasn’t been signed. While the A350 numbers aren’t bad, it has yet to garner a serious blue chip airline customer (TAM, Finnair, and USAirways are the quality buyers here). A runner-up plane gets a 25% market share (Udvar-Hazy’s figure) and weak pricing. That’s the aviation equivalent of a set of steak knives.Īnd so far, that’s reality. Udvar-Hazy confirmed that the middle market is where the action is, and he implied this looked like a winner-take-most market.

This means that any airline management team that selects the A350 has to explain to their board why, exactly, they chose a plane that the smart money regards as a runner-up. GECAS’s Henry Hubschman then endorsed Udvar-Hazy’s message. After John Leahy gave a vigorously optimistic review of Airbus’s widebody products, Udvar-Hazy praised the latest A350 incarnation, then damned it with a “silver medal” compared with the 787’s gold. ILFC’s Steven Udvar-Hazy, easily one of the most powerful men in aviation, cast serious doubt about Airbus’s A350 at this year’s ISTAT conference. Selling aircraft is particularly tough, but it really depends more on the product and less on the sales technique. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. It’s like the sales contest in Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross: “As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. And sometimes second best doesn’t get you much.

Selling things for a living is hard work. Dear Fellow Airplane Development Second-Guessers,

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