Aircraft
Civil sales heat up as deals bloom in the desert
The cash registers started to ring here at the 2009 Dubai Airshow yesterday with a modest but nonetheless welcome batch of airliner and engine orders.

The cash registers started to ring here at the 2009 Dubai Airshow yesterday with a modest but nonetheless welcome batch of airliner and engine orders. Airbus firmed up a new customer in Ethiopian Airlines, which converted a memorandum of understanding for 12 A350XWBs into a firm $3 billion order. Turbofan manufacturers shared a $2.6 billion batch of powerplant deals, and, combined with a flurry of smaller aircraft and systems deals, this took the tally for the first 24 hours of announced show business close to $7 billion.

The deal signed with Ethiopian Airlines marked the first-ever order for Airbus aircraft by the east African carrier, which also holds orders for the A350’s prime competitor, the Boeing 787. The contract raised the number of firm orders for the A350XWB family to 505 from 32 customers.