Airbus Group SE booked $57 billion in sales in the 2015 Paris Air Show to beat rival Boeing Co.'s $50.2 billion tally after the French aircraft maker booked a $12.5 billion deal to sell 110 units to Hungarian liner Wizz Air Holdings at the close of the event.
Airbus sold 421 aircrafts during the event, with 124 firm orders worth $16.3 billion while the rest were commitments to buy. The Seattle-based Boeing, meanwhile, sold 331 units, of which 145 were firm orders worth $18.6 billion.
Boeing led the sales contest for the past three days, but was overtaken by Airbus's deal with the Hungarian budget liner and with no sales orders on the last day. Aside from the 110 aircrafts, Wizz Air which focuses operations in Eastern Europe, also plans to purchase 90 more from Airbus as it continues to expand.
The aircrafts are set to be delivered to Wizz Air from 2019 to 2024, adding to its fleet of 61 aircraft that serves close to 400 routes in the region.
A Bloomberg report said that the single-aisle plane similar to what Wizz air purchased was the aircraft with the highest demand during the show. Airbus already has orders for 4,000 of the aircraft, while demand for Boeing's similar model is about a thousand units lower.
Bloomberg noted that that while Boeing lost to Airbus in total sales, it did manage to sell 20 of 747-8 jumbo planes to a Russion company unlike Airbus which had no takers for its double-deck A380s, currently the largest passenger airliner in the world, during the air show.
Airbus acknowledged that the A380 may have been launched ahead of its time, but it remains confident in selling up to 25 units of the airplane within the year and more in the year to come as more people travel on air, the report added.
