Airbus inks $2bn deal with China

[dArKeR]

Paris - The European aircraft maker Airbus on Friday signed a $2 billion contract with Chinese airline China Eastern for long-haul planes but is still waiting to clinch an order for its super-jumbo A380 plane.

China Eastern chairman Ye Yigan and Airbus chief executive Noel Forgeard inked the deal for the sale of 20 A330-300 long-range planes for about two billion dollars.

The order was accompanied by a letter of intent to purchase 10 additional planes of the same type by another Chinese company that has yet to be named.

Forgeard said the sale would be worth slightly more than a billion dollars.

http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2110663

What am I missing here? Boeing gives its 7E7 contracts to China then the Communists backstab us by buying Airbus?

[Snazzy]

1. This will make Airbus surpass Boeing for the first time

in orders.

Read up on this briefly. The a330 takes three different engines, so far (they say it will eventually take the new 7E7 Boeing engine too). According to Times of London, Chinese have not picked which.

One possible angle here is that Carlyle owns Fiat Avio, which may make out (I say may because I don't have time right now to try to untangle the web of mergers and compatible engines--they do make engines for Airbus' jumbo, the a380 already). There's also GE, Rolls Royce and Boeing itself for engines. I wonder what the $$$ are for the engine part or if that is included.