Boeing’s Big Year (BA)

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 27, 5:56AM EST

With all of the fanfare about Boeing’s recent successe it is hard to believe that 2006 will be the first year that it has outsold rival Airbus.

Boeing should ship over 900 planes this year compared to Airbus’s 700. Delays in the Airbus super-jumbo 380 have not helped the European company. Sales of Boeings 777 Freighter and an uptick in 747 orders have helped the company.

But, Boeing’s lead may not last. The Airbus 380 is coming online now, and the plane does carry a passenger load much larger than the new 747-8. And, sales of the Airbus 320 have started to pick up. In November, most of the Airbus planes sold were 320s.

Boeing’s stock has stepped up nicely due to both commercial and military orders, but it now sits at close to $90. Just under two years ago, it was below $50.

It may not take much of a resurgence at Airbus to stop the upward movement in Boeing’s shares.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.