Flying High

EUROPE WAS CROWING, and it could be heard all the way across the ocean.

Airbus called Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner “dreaming in Seattle,” and Airbus’s then-CEO Noel Forgard dismissed the 787 as a “Chinese copy of [Airbus’s] A330.” The BBC said Airbus had stolen the march on its arc-rival Boeing, and the Economist predicted Airbus’s A380 super-jumbo would “break the 747’s longstanding monopoly on the big-jet market.” Airbus’s sales chief John J. Leahy said Boeing was ”just flailing around looking for something to compete with us.”