Middle Eastern airlines went on a shopping spree at the 10th Dubai Air Show, currently underway, and Airbus appears to have regained its position as the top-selling commercial planemaker. Airbus says its taken a total of 290 orders at the show while Boeing was at 153 on Tuesday. The redesigned A350 is proving especially popular among the carriers with their very fat checkbooks out. On the opening day of the show, Emirates Airlines announced it would buy 120 A350s and 11 A380s. Boeing had hoped to sell its 787 Dreamliner to Emirates but got the (relatively) small portion of the airlines $35 billion fleet expansion with an order for 12 777 ER wide bodies. Most of the activity is being generated by oil-rich Gulf area countries. In addition to Emirates, Yemenia, Air Oman and Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) made substantial purchases, most of them from Airbus. However, DAE was also good to Boeing, with a 100-plane purchase valued at $13.7 billion. DAE bought 70 737s and a mix of 787s, 777s and 747s. The balance of Boeings sales went to Qatar Airlines, Emirates and Dubai-based aircraft leasing company LCAL.
