Technical difficulties

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, January 25, 2006

We seem to be struggling with technical difficulties, and we’re just going to have to put up with them for a few days, because both of our Heraldnet.com tech people are out sick right now.

But Aerospace Blogmaster Scott Hamilton http://www.leeham.net/RunScript.asp?page=&Article_ID=39&AR=AR&ap=NewsArticleDetail.asp&p=ASP\~Pg0.asp sends this along in response to “New Math” below:

“When Airbus (hereafter AB) announced its numbers, with the stunning December, I quizzed the AB spokesman very carefully about how the numbers were calculated. He assured me that 1) these were all firm contracts, 2) money had been deposited, 3) all the deals announced were converted commitments announced earlier in the year; and 4) he had quizzed the Higher Ups whether there was any monkey business (my words) with the numbers because he knew these very questions would be asked. He was assured by the Higher Ups of the foregoing items 1 through 3.

It should be noted that AB itself only lists 87 A350 orders on its website, not 172, for 2005 (the latter number reflecting commitments). The media, for whatever reason, chose to report 172, which I believe is to its everlasting embarrassment. I’ll remind readers that the media made much of the fact that Boeing failed to meet its goal of 200 787 orders in 2004— no such slack was given in reporting the commitments to the 787 at that time. No such slack should be given to AB now for the A350. 87 is 87 is 87, not 172.”

By “the media,” of course, Scott doesn’t mean The Herald. We (I) reported the 87 figure in my Jan. 18 story on the year-end numbers. http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/01/18/100bus_airbus001.cfm