"Go Airbus!" he cheered, quietly

THIS POST HAS BEEN CORRECTED HERE.

Native-born Seattleites such as I tend to reflexively favor Boeing aircraft. It’s hard not to develop such loyalty when half your childhood friends had Boeing-employed parents. I grew up checking each plane that flew overhead to see if it was "one of ours" or a competitor’s.

But my regard for the Seattle-built jet maker is tarnished substantially now, because Boeing, not its current rival Airbus, is wearing the black hat in the present airplane sale wars.

Although neither Boeing’s newest airplane, the 7E7, nor Airbus’s newest, the A380, are flying in anything but computer simulations yet, the two models are already locked in a desperate struggle to dominate the future of commercial aviation. The 7E7 is billed, by Boeing, as a nimble, efficient, versatile plane that makes a huge leap in fuel efficiency over its predecessors. The A380 is billed, by Boeing, as a gluttonous behemoth of an aircraft—two stories and 555 seats.

But, as I said in a Seattle Times op-ed today, the Airbus plane is actually the more efficient in energy use, per passenger-mile.

Posted by Alan Durning