空客在关键市场领域击败波音

截至2015年前11个月，空客销售了1,000多架飞机，因此，在与对手波音的年度订单竞赛中，这家欧洲航空巨人几乎稳操胜券。然而，由于交付的滞后，空客十有八九难以实现其2015年的生产目标，而波音也将因此继续坐拥“世界最大的飞机制造商”头衔。

就飞机订单数而言（不计订单取消），波音拿到了1,007架，比空客少568架。但波音的飞机交付数量却大幅领先空客，同期交付数量多出了709架。2015年前11个月，空客仅交付了556架飞机，比自身的2015年生产目标少了74架。

航空顾问公司Teal Group分析业务副总裁理查德•阿伯拉菲亚表示，尽管这一边倒的订单册证明了空客在销量上击败了波音，但这些数字的背后却蕴含着更加微妙的信息。

他说：“波音实际上略微领先。人们在对比每一年的数据时都乐于寻找炫耀的资本，但从其他方面来看，这种做法是毫无意义的，因为整个行业的订单规模才1.2万架。目前的情况是，空客在飞机数量上略微领先，而波音则在价值方面稍胜一筹。空客的优势在于窄体机，而波音的优势在于宽体机。综合来看，两家公司各占约50%的市场份额。”

空客在过去几年中的销售业绩十分强劲，尤其是其备受欢迎的A320窄体机最新的迭代机型A320neo。该机型将于下个月投入商业运营。然而，公司的生产能力拖了后腿。宽体机A350的交付量未能达到2015年的预期目标，到目前为止仅交付了11架（低于目标交付量4架）。虽然空客首席执行官法布里斯•布利叶已承认供应商难以跟进空客提升A350生产线产能的做法，但该公司仍计划在2016年交付30架A350。

所以，尽管空客近期在业内的统计数据中捷报频传，但供应商问题可能会在2016年给公司带来麻烦。空客相对于波音的市场优势在于窄体机型，这一点没有变化。波音在其华盛顿州埃弗里特的工厂举行了媒体发布会，向公众展示了其新737MAX窄体机型，但空客发布的数据显示，空客在节油小型机体市场中的份额达到了60%。

得益于亚洲和世界其他地区短途旅行需求的增加，窄体机市场领域一直在发展壮大。由于波音737MAX的预计服役时间在2017年之后，因此空客仍有时间继续发挥其优势。2015年，波音737MAX系列机型仅卖出了292架，而上年同期为781架。空客A320neo斩获了825架的订单，较上年的782架有所增加。总体来看，空客拿到了4,443架A320neos订单，而波音的737MAX订单还不到3,000架。

空客是否能维持这一市场优势取决于多个因素，尤其是两家公司执行其激进制造计划的能力。鉴于订单的继续增长，空客和波音都在大幅提升生产率。然而，阿伯拉菲亚表示，从投资者的角度来看，对飞机行业有着最大影响的因素却完全不在双方首席执行官的掌控之中，一个是油价，一个是利率。

他说，如果油价仍低位运行，而借贷成本继续上升，该行业将很快陷入困境。当油价高居不下，借贷成本处于低位时，航空公司自然而然会考虑用更新更节油的机型替换老型号的耗油机型。但是如果这一环境发生变化，航空公司购买新机型的可能性就会降低。

阿伯拉菲亚说：“近七八年来，我们一直生活在这一近乎理想的环境中——借贷成本几乎为零——而且人们有充分的理由来替换其老旧机型。其中的一个因素正在变化，而另一个因素可能会彻底改变。”（财富中文网）

译者：冯丰

校对：詹妮

Airbus has sold more than 1,000 aircraft in the first 11 months of this year, making the European aerospace giant more or less a lock to win its annual order competition with rival Boeing “BA” . But with deliveries lagging, Airbus will almost certainly fail to meet its production targets for 2015, letting Boeing hold onto the “world’s largest plane maker” crown.

In terms of aircraft orders, Airbus outsold Boeing 1,007 to 568, excluding cancellations. Boeing, meanwhile, out-delivered Airbus by a wide margin, with 709 aircraft delivered over the same period. Airbus handed over the keys to just 556 aircraft in the first 11 months of the year, leaving it 74 aircraft short of its 2015 production target.

While the lopsided order book suggests Airbus is trouncing Boeing sales, a deeper reading of the numbers tells a more nuanced story, says Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at aerospace consultancy Teal Group.

“Boeing’s actually a little bit ahead,” he says. “The idea of looking at any one year—it’s fun for bragging rights but otherwise it’s completely meaningless when you’ve got an industry with 12,000 jets on backlog. What you’ve got is a situation where Airbus is a little ahead in number of tails, but Boeing is slightly ahead in value. Airbus has a better position in the narrow-body market, Boeing is ahead in wide-body, and together it works out to be about 50-50.”

Airbus has enjoyed strong sales over the last several years, particularly for the latest iteration of its popular A320 narrow-body jet–the A320neo–which will begin commercial operation next month. But the company has had trouble keeping pace on the production side. Deliveries of its wide-body A350 lag 2015 projections, with just 11 of the jets delivered so far in 2015 (four short of the company’s target). Airbus plans to deliver 30 A350s in 2016 even as Airbus CEO FabriceBrégier has acknowledged that suppliers are already having trouble coping withAirbus’s increased rate of production on the A350 line.

That could spell trouble for the company going into 2016, though there’s plenty of good news for Airbus in the latest batch of industry numbers. Airbus’s strong position relative to Boeing in the narrow-body jetliner market persists. As Boeing hosted media at its Everett, Wash., manufacturing facility on Monday and Tuesday for a public unveiling of its new 737MAX narrow-body airliner, numbers released by Airbus showed that it has grabbed 60% of the market for fuel-efficient, smaller-body jets.

That market segment that continues to boom thanks to demand for short-haul air travel routes in Asia and elsewhere. And with Boeing’s 737MAX slated to enter service no sooner than 2017, Airbus has time to press its advantage. Boeing has sold just 292 jets in the 737MAX family thus far this year, compared with 781 in the same period last year. Airbus logged 825 orders for the A320neo, up from 782 the year before. All said, Airbus has 4,443 A320neos, while Boeing has just shy of 3,000 737MAX jets on order.

Whether or not Airbus can retain that market advantage will depend on several factors, not least each company’s ability to execute its aggressive manufacturing programs. Both Airbus and Boeing are pushing manufacturing rates skyward as orders continue to swell. But from an investor standpoint, Aboulafia says, the factors that could have the biggest impact on the industry are completely out of their CEOs’ hands: fuel prices and interest rates.

If oil prices remain low and the cost of borrowing inches upward, the industry could quickly find itself in trouble, he says. When fuel is costly and cash is cheap, it makes a lot of sense for airlines to look at replacing older, less efficient airplanes with newer, more efficient models. But if the environment changes, airlines may be less likely to buy new planes.

“We’ve been living in this incredibly perfect environment for seven or eight years now where cash is almost free and there’s every reason in the world to replace your older aircraft,” Aboulafia says. “One of those is changing and the other one could well change.”