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Airbus Loses Substantial Market Share to Boeing | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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FRANKFURT (AFP) – European aircraft maker Airbus will later this week announce a significant slump in its market share last year as arch-rival Boeing leapt ahead in terms of orders, the Financial Times Deutschland reported.

Quoting figures that would officially be published on Tuesday, FT Deutschland said that Airbus, a unit of the European Aeronautics Defence and Space Company, saw its market share by value fall to 40 percent last year from 45 percent the year before.

Airbus received orders for just 800 aircraft in 2006, down from 1,055 in 2005, the newspaper said.

The figures come after Boeing announced record commercial aircraft orders for 2006, beating Airbus for the first time since 2000, the report continued.

Airbus is suffering from relatively weak sales of its A330/340 models, as well as the A380, which is heavily burdened by production problems, and the repeatedly re-designed A350, FT Deutschland said.

In the segment for wide-body airplanes, Airbus’s market share now stands at only 18 percent, compared to Boeing’s 82 percent, it added.