One month after Boeing (NYSE: BA) suffered a huge defeat at the hands of Airbus, and just a few weeks after my Foolish colleague Evan Niu warned a second disaster was in the offing, Boeing is flying high again. In July, Boeing pinched every penny till it screamed but still failed to win a majority of new plane orders in AMR's (NYSE: AMR) recent purchase of single-aisle jets. Evan fears the company is about to lose its monopoly over airplane sales at Southwest (NYSE: LUV) as well. But this week, the worrywarts' grumblings got drowned in an echo of cheers:
Boeing just beat Airbus at Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL).
The details
According to The Wall Street Journal, Delta has chosen Boeing as sole supplier in a mongo 100-plane order. The planes in question, extra-long 737-900s, are valued in excess of $8 billion (at list prices, at least). This is kind of surprising, actually, given the sales momentum Airbus has achieved in recent months. It's even more surprising when you remember that Delta recently merged with Northwest (a big Airbus customer) and adopted Northwest's boss as its new CEO.
The only downside to this news? Boeing's distressingly long backlog of 737 orders to fill just got 100 planes longer. I bet they're crying ... all the way to the bank.
