The Winners And Losers of The Dubai Air Show 2023

The 2023 Dubai Air Show was an intense and busy week for all those involved. The show was quite interesting as the saw a number of important orders being announced at Dubai World Central (DWC) airport. So with the week wrapped up it’s time to talk about the biggest winners and losers during this week.

The Winners of The Dubai Airshow Week

It was quite clear from the get go that this would play out in a very different way Paris. The airlines that were likely to place an order where mainly in need to Boeing planes. That’s exactly how it played out.

The likes of:

• Emirates
• Ethiopian Airlines
• FlyDubai
• Sun Express

All placed double digit orders with Boeing, with a significant amount of wide body planes being ordered. Other smaller orders also rolled in from:

• Royal Jordanian
• Royal Air Maroc
• SCAT

Therefore it is clear and quite easy to declare Boeing the clear winner of this week. Also a huge win for Boeing was the massive order of 90 777X jets Emirates placed. An order that injects confidence into a heavily delayed project.

Another smaller, much smaller, winner is ATR which managed to attract some press attention with the order placed by leasing firm Abelo for up to 20 ATR 72-600.

The Losers of The DAS 2023 Week

Although Airbus managed to rack up a decent amount of orders (66 units) most came for in a single bulk order by AirBaltic for the tiny A220-300. Only 36 orders came in for wide body jets, specifically the A350-900, and none for any other narrow body. This though is no surprise taking into account the more wide body oriented crowd that attends the Dubai Air Show.

Also something that must have hurt to hear is the criticism Tim Clark, president of Emirates, had for the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine and its sub-par performance on the A350-1000. So Airbus falls under the losers of the air show but they come from a very strong performance in the Paris Air Show, so it’s understandable that Boeing would have taken over the show in the middle east where they have a huge client base.

However the biggest loser among the manufactures has to be, unfortunately, Embraer who didn’t manage to secure a single contract for their E2 family of jets. It’s a real pity as the product seems to be a solid one under all performance parameters and is among the quietest and greenest out here.

Dubai Air Show Aircraft Order Recap