Airbus jabs rival Boeing with new ad series

Airbus SAS accused Boeing Co. of making misleading claims about its aircraft’s performance and ridiculed its competitor with an advertising campaign showing a Boeing jet nose grotesquely elongated to resemble Pinocchio’s.

The ad, which appears this week in trade publications including Aviation Week and Flight, asserts that Boeing is “stretching the truth” in its own campaign to promote its aircraft. Boeing representatives didn’t immediately respond to requests seeking comment.

“They crossed a line when they started running specific numbers,” Airbus sales chief John Leahy said in an interview. “They’ve blatantly misrepresented the facts.”

The bickering between theindustry’s duopoly highlights the stakes in the $70 billion global civil aviation industry, as both companies fight to trump one another in orders. Airbus is set to lose its delivery lead this year for the first time in almost a decade, after Boeing overcame production delays and began shipping its new 787 Dreamliner to customers.

Airbus and Boeing are both drawing comparisons with each other’s narrow-body aircraft, the industry’s workhorses, and their four-engine A-380 and 747-8 jumbo jets. Leahy said Airbus was driven to act only after Boeing ran its own ads with specific claims alleging the superiority of its 737 Max over the A-320Neo and its 747-8 over Airbus’ A-380.

The 737 Max ad claims that the plane boasts 8 percent lower costs per seat than Airbus’A-320neo. Airbus wrote to Boeing’s general counsel complaining the numbers are “wildly out of line,” and the Toulouse, France-based company chose to place ads addressing airlines only after Boeing failed to respond, Leahy said.

The two planemakers combined have delivered more than 12,000 narrow-body planes since Boeing 737s reached their first customers in 1967. In its ad, Airbus said it is now dominant in the market for very large aircraft with its A-380 doubledecker, a niche where Boeing has struggled to maintain the popularity of previous iterations of its iconic 747 jumbo.

Airbus and Boeing have sparred in public before. Some 15 years ago, Airbus took out ads touting the now out-ofproduction four-engine A-340 as safer than a twin-enginerival offered by Boeing. The U.S. manufacturer took umbrage that its competitor had breached an unwritten understanding not to use safety issues to market its planes.

The manufacturers have promoted competing planes for decades, each choosing parameters that would give its own model an edge with buyers.

“The truth about these claims is that neither side knows,” said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of consultant Teal Group in Fairfax, Va.

Airbus was concerned that some “less sophisticated airlines” might be swayed by Boeing’s claims and be less inclined to talk to Airbus, Leahy said. The sales chief said he didn’t know what Airbus will do if Boeing ignores its ads.

“We’ll take one step at a time,” he said.

Business, Pages 20 on 11/27/2012

Upcoming Events