Boeing expects significant Farnborough orders

FARNBOROUGH, England (Reuters) - Boeing Co said on Monday it has taken an order for 30 777 wide-bodies from Dubai-based-Emirates and expects to announce more orders this week, particularly from airplane leasing companies.

Boeing, the world's second-largest planemaker after Airbus, flagged its new orders on the first day of the Farnborough Airshow outside London. The air show is a popular venue for Boeing and rivals to publicize their deals.

"Internally we've raised our forecast for the number of orders we would get this year twice," said Jim Albaugh, the chief executive of Boeing's Commercial Airplanes, told reporters.

He said Boeing would announce a "significant number" of orders over the next couple of days.

"This is going to be a good air show for us," Albaugh said. "This is going to be a good air show for Airbus as well."

In additional to the Emirates order, Boeing said it took orders from the aircraft leasing arm of General Electric Co for 40 of the company's 737-800 planes with a list value of $3 billion. Later in the day, Boeing said it took an order from Norwegian Air for 15 737s.

Airbus also won a large order from Air Lease Corp, recently set up by Steve Udvar-Hazy, the founder and former head of American International Group Inc unit ILFC. The company ordered 51 Airbus passenger jets from the A320 series. Airbus took an order for 60 planes from the GE unit. GE's entire order was worth about $8 billion.

Albaugh said he saw an "uneven" recovery in the global economy and the United States appeared to be lagging.

Boeing has an order backlog of 3,350 planes worth about $250 billion to the company, but only 10 percent of that backlog represents orders from North American customers.

"There's a very pent-up demand for airplanes," he said.

He said he expects to see new competition in the narrow-body market, where Boeing's 737 is a popular model.

Albaugh said, however, that Bombardier Inc's. narrow-body C-Series model, which will compete with the 737, has not yet taken a significant portion of the market share.

"Competition is good. Competition makes us better," he said.

He also said Boeing will likely make a decision later this year on whether to re-engine its 737 or design a new model.

Albaugh also said the World Trade Organization dispute over alleged improper government subsidies to planemakers is between the United States and the European Union -- not between Boeing and Airbus.

On the defense side, Boeing said it expects slight continued growth in military aircraft sales over the next five to 10 years, bolstered by international sales -- including the prospect for India to double its order of 10 C-17 transport planes.

Shares of Boeing, a Dow component, were up 1.2 percent at $62.64 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher and Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Dan Lalor and Gerald E. McCormick; Reuters