Orders for the Airbus Corporate Jetliner (ACJ) family have
surpassed a milestone 50 aircraft with the sale of four more to an undisclosed
customer earlier this year.
The announcement comes in the same week that Boeing reported
sales of its Boeing Business Jet topping the 100 mark. The BBJ program was
launched in 1996, with Airbus entering the corporate market one year later.
Airbus now claims to be catching up after a slow start,
achieving its goal of winning at least half of top-of-the-line business jet sales,
estimated at about 15 aircraft per year.
Airbus has logged 11 orders since the beginning of 2005, and
nine deliveries are scheduled for this year. It announced seven orders here at
NBAA alone— three for a Chinese customer, one in Florida, and three of the new
A318 Elite for an operator in Russia.
"All of our approved cabin outfitters have one or more
aircraft in completion at the moment, confirming our capability to secure
completion slots for our customers," said Richard Gaona, evp of executive and
private aviation. Airbus has employed the following four completion centers to
outfit the ACJ: Associated Air Center in Texas, Jet Aviation in Basel,
Lufthansa Technik in Hamburg and EADS Sogerma in Toulouse.
Corporate customers of the ACJ include Aero Services
Executive of France, the Al Kharafi Group of Kuwait, Blue Moon Aviation of the
U.S., the UB Group of India and DaimlerChrysler of Germany, as well as the
governments of Brazil, France, Italy, Thailand and Venezuela.
In addition to the A320 family-based ACJs, customers
continue to order private versions of larger Airbus models, including the
A340-600 contracted by an unnamed Saudi prince. Airbus officials provided no
additional answers to the oft-asked question about an ACJ version of the
mega-airliner A380.
