Boeing Not the One in World News Today

The world cheered today as the Airbus A380 Behemoth managed its first flight in front of a crowd 30,000. With actual air miles under its belt the path is clear for the A380 to overtake the Boeing 747 as the world's largest production jetliner.

Not so fast, says Boeing (from the AP):

But the hats stayed on in Seattle, home to a sizable part of Boeing's operations. The superjumbo is "a very large airplane for a very small market," Boeing spokesman Jim Condelles said.

"First flights are always very interesting and exciting. It's an engineering accomplishment that Airbus should be very proud of," he said. "We just don't see a market for 1,250 of these airplanes over the next 20 years."

Condelles was referring to Airbus' global market forecast for very large jets. Boeing sees demand for just 400 jets with 450 seats or more. If Airbus is right, it could enjoy a near-monopoly in that market while Boeing scrambles to produce a competitor.

Boeing is still convinced that its smaller, lighter, more excitingly named Dreamliner is the future of the aerospace industry and not the giant A380. With its CEO position still officially vacant after kindly, old Stonecipher philandered his way out of it and first quarter earnings seeing a 14 percent drop the Chicago-based company has more immediate worries than the A380. That's right, "Chicago-based." We don't even know why we're covering Boeing stories anymore. In fact, disregard this entire post. It's just an excuse to show you the cool picture above of the A380 interior, anyway.