Airbus selected Diehl Stiftung & Co. and Thales as the preferred bidder for its Laupheim site (ATWOnline, May 15). Airbus and Diehl/Thales will enter into negotiations toward arriving at a final sales agreement. Thales and Diehl already are partnered in Diehl Aerospace, an aircraft component and systems supplier formed in 2000. Diehl holds 51% of that venture and Thales 49%. The selection "also includes A350 XWB cabin work-packages for Laupheim," according to Airbus.

Air One is expected to announce a widebody aircraft order with Airbus Wednesday, ATWOnline learned in Istanbul. The privately held Italian carrier recently took delivery of its first two A330-200s, which it will use on its first long-haul routes from Milan Malpensa to Boston and Chicago O'Hare starting later this month.

XL Airways last week put its first 737-900 into service on routes from Manchester. Aircraft seats 215. The airline serves more than 750,000 passengers at the airport annually.

AirTran Airways will defer the delivery of 18 737-700s from 2009-11 to 2013-14, it announced Friday. President and CEO Bob Farnaro said the deferment will "accomplish a substantial portion" of the carrier's previously announced plan to reduce 2008-09 growth from 10% to "no more than flat" (ATWOnline, April 23). It currently operates 54 -700s and 87 717-200s.

Cathay Pacific Airways announced the promotions of GM-Revenue Management, Sales & Distribution Ian Shiu to director-corporate development, GM-Southwest Pacific Ivan Chu to director-service delivery, current Director-Service Delivery Quince Chong to director-corporate affairs and James Finlay MD Rupert Hogg to director-cargo. All appointments are effective in July. Separately, CX took delivery of its first 747-400ERF last week. It will take five more this year and also has 10 747-8Fs on order for delivery in 2009-12.

LIKE MUCH ELSE ABOUT UNITED Parcel Service, which was launched more than 100 years ago as a Seattle messenger service relying on a team of fast…

WHEN AIRBUS ANNOUNCED THE A350 XWB featuring a completely new wing and wider fuselage made with carbon fiber, engineers at Airbus, Thales and Honeywell no doubt were eager to turn their talents to the cockpit and avionics and improve upon the A330 and A380 configurations proposed for earlier A350 studies. Judging from the resultant transformation, they must have taken a good, hard look at the 787's futuristic cockpit and integrated avionics and avidly set themselves the goal of not only meeting but exceeding this state of the art.

DERMOT MANNION IS NOT SHY ABOUT EXTOLLING the virtues of the airline he joined as chief executive in August 2005. "We believe that Aer Lingus is the most successful of the European flag carriers in the way the business has been reengineered in recent years to operate on a low cost basis," he tells ATW at the airline's headquarters here. "Carriers tend to be either legacy full-service or LCC. We operate a hybrid model, which is quite unusual by industry standards, but we think it works well."