India leads a boom in orders for passenger jets

Traditions aboundAmax at the annual airshow that rotates between Paris and Farnborough. One is visitors’ observation that a glittering capital city, with the Eiffel Tower visible through the haze at the end of the runway, is preferable to a British town so unremarkable that its main attraction is its biennial airshow. Another is complaints about the heat from those trudging airstrips covered in commercial jets, fighter planes, helicopters and other pieces of high-tech kit.The most predictable convention is that Airbus, a European aerospace giant, will take the opportunity while on home tarmac to deliver a blow to Boeing, its American rival in the duopoly supplying the world’s big passenger jets. On June 19th it did not disappoint. Amid a slew of smaller deals, the most eye-catching was a whopper from IndiGo, an Indian low-cost carrier. Its order for 500 narrow-body jets from Airbus’s 320 family, to be delivered in 2030-35, is the biggest ever struck. Boeing’s only significant riposte was to confirm an order made in February by Air India for 190 of its competing 737 s and 30 of its wide-body long-haul jets.