P.M. BRIEFING : Airbus Firm Anticipates Profit

Airbus Industrie today said it expects to report its first operating profit this year due to more aircraft orders and efforts to cut production costs.

“The increase in orders is, in turn, a consequence of the consortium’s recently completed aircraft family . . . as well as of the continued buoyant market for airliner sales,” the consortium of four European aircraft companies said in its monthly newsletter. It put no figure on the profit.

Airbus said the profit will be shared among its four partners--France’s Aerospatiale and West Germany’s Messerschmitt-Boelkow-Blohm, which each have a 38% stake, British Aerospace PLC with 20% and CASA of Spain with 4%.

Airbus said it won firm orders for 254 aircraft during the first nine months of the year, down from 310 in the first three quarters of 1989.