The chances of Airbus in securing a 100-plane order for its A350 XWB from Emirates have improved since the plane maker came up with a wider body and new wing for the airliner, the carrier's president said.

"There was a canyon between the Boeing's 787 and the A350," Tim Clark said in an interview on April 10 after returning from Airbus's base in Toulouse, France, where he inspected the A350. "Now that gap has closed. Airbus listened. They knew that the 787 was making great inroads because the 787 is a great machine."

Airbus, the world's biggest maker of commercial aircraft, won clearance from parent company European Aeronautic Defence & Space in December to develop a wider version of the 250-to-350-seat A350, after airlines snubbed the original design as too derivative of Airbus's current A330 model. The redesign is the plane maker's sixth attempt to offer a rival to the 787, Bloomberg News said.

"This will definitely put price pressure on Boeing, but it's nothing they weren't expecting," said Richard Pinkham, a Singapore-based consultant with the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, in an interview on April 11. "They had a nice run where they were the only game in town, but they knew it wouldn't last."

Boeing, which has begun major assembly of the 787, called the Dreamliner, is on schedule to deliver the first one in May 2008 and is working with suppliers on how to build more to meet demand. The plane is sold out until the "back end" of 2013, program manager Michael Bair said in March.

Boeing is counting on the 787 to win back dominance of the US$60 billion jetliner market from Airbus.