Competition is everything in the business world and aircraft making is no difference.
With Indonesian airline, Lion Air, ordering 234 planes from Airbus (which is the civilian aircraft business of the European aerospace and defense company EADS) is not only its biggest deal in their history, but took money away from U.S. rival, Boeing (the company that Lion Air, just last year, ordered 230 planes from).
The deal is worth $24 billion and "should inspire the struggling French economy and all of Europe," said Airbus's President Francois Hollande, According to USA Today.
Lion Air's order calls for 169 A320s and 65 A321 jets. The first planes are scheduled to be delivered in 2014 and most of them will be outfitted with a new, more fuel-efficient engine that Airbus developed recently.
"Our ambition at the European level isn't to just continue the great EADS adventure but to also conceive of other EADS for other economic sectors with our European partners," Hollande said. "Europe isn't just a market. ... Europe is also an industrial ambition," reported USA Today.
The comment was made in hopes to inspire European countries to cooperate in other sectors. France, Germany and Spain are all shareholders in EADS and hold significant power and influence in it.
However, the issues for france is that making anything in the country is very expensive. This is due in large part because the cost of labor, including salaries and benefits, is so high.
USA Today states that "some companies fear that it's too hard to fire French workers when things get tough and are instead eyeing countries like Spain, which has recently overhauled its labor rules and can offer some of the same advantages as France."
To answer this order, Boeing announced a deal, on Tuesday, with European-based-discount-airline Ryanair, for 175 aircraft (the biggest-european deal for Boeing).
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