Airbus loses market share to Boeing's 787

Airbus has announced a significant slump in its market share last year as Boeing has leapt ahead in terms of orders, the Financial Times Deutschland reported.

FT Deutschland said that Airbus saw its wide-body aircraft market share by value fall to 40% last year from 45% the year before. Airbus received orders for 824 aircraft in 2006, down from 1,111 in 2005, the newspaper said.

The figures come after Boeing announced record commercial aircraft orders for 2006, beating Airbus for the first time since 2000, the report continued.

Airbus is suffering from relatively weak sales of its A330/340 models, as well as the A380, which is heavily burdened with production problems, and the repeatedly re-designed A350, FT Deutschland said.