Airbus Says It’s Planning a Jet to Rival Boeing’s 747

Airbus Industrie plans to develop a jumbo passenger aircraft to take on main rival Boeing Co. and its popular 747 jetliner, a top partner in the European consortium said Thursday.

Manfred Bischoff, chairman of Daimler Benz Aerospace, or DASA, told a news conference that he is working with his Airbus Industrie partners to finalize development and production plans for the aircraft.

“The focus for Airbus is clearly on the upper end,” he said.

Bischoff said development costs of the jetliner--dubbed the A3XX--would be $8 billion to $12 billion and that Airbus would consider signing up more partners to help produce the plane.

DASA, with a 37.9% share in the Airbus consortium, is the principal partner along with France’s Aerospatiale. British Aerospace holds a 20% share in the group and Casa of Spain holds 4.2%.

Dietrich Russel, the DASA board member responsible for the company’s aircraft group, underlined the gap in the Airbus family of aircraft exposed by the success of the 747, the main workhorse in international long-haul travel.

“Boeing has seen mega-deals for aircraft that we don’t make. We need to expand the Airbus family,” he said.

He said Airbus is studying how many seats such a jumbo airliner should have and whether it should be a double-decker.

Industry analysts have said Airbus is interested in developing a jumbo jetliner because Boeing currently has the highly profitable market for the aircraft basically to itself.

A profitable jumbo jet, they said, would enable Airbus to accept lower prices on small aircraft it hopes to develop, making those more competitive with Boeing as well.