Boeing’s new 787 ‘Dreamliner’ is selling like crazy – it’s the fastest-selling airliner in history, and well it should be. It’s the first airliner of the true next generation, designed using modern composite materials to improve efficiency and range. Unfortunately for Boeing, the three variants – short-range 787-3, long-range -8, and stretched -9 – are on the small side. This was undoubtedly done, in part, to avoid pushing into 777-200 sales, but it may have already cost Boeing some sales.

Airbus, on the other hand, based their newest twinjet on the larger A330; it was originally pitched as the A330-200Lite. Since then it’s gotten a lithium-aluminum fuselage, more composite parts, and has been renamed “The all-new A350” – a bit of a white lie, we’ll let it slide. It does have a new wing, along with redesigned aerodynamics and an exciting new cockpit window design. Really; that’s a selling point. Regardless of the new (and old) features, the A350 has one advantage over the 787 series: it can carry more passengers.

This perceived advantage has prompted several airlines, particularly Emirates, to pressure Boeing into confirming a 787-10 stretch. There have been plans for a double stretch, but they weren’t meant to enter production for years; the latest work on a -10 model, however, has prompted Airbus to consider an even heavier A350 variant.

Still, Boeing has a significant lead with sales, one which is growing monthly. A recent Seattle Times article quotes Steven Udvar-Hazy – chairman of the gigantic lessor, ILFC – on the A350: “we want to have long-term residual value in the A350… We’re not interested in a Band-aid reaction to the 787.” Which is, at the absolute level, exactly what the A350 should be seen as. It uses the same fuselage cross-section as the 25-year-old A300, a cost-saving measure that not long ago bit Boeing’s 737NG. If the 787 is (roughly) in the sixth generation of airliners, the A350 is the ultimate development of the fifth. Udvar-Hazy thinks, and I agree, that to be competitive with the 787 Airbus needs a massive redesign.

John Leahy, Airbus’ sales champion, disagrees – but then again, it’s bad for sales to agree that your new product is basically a stopgap. The European manufacturer obviously can’t afford to funnel even more money into the A350, with their A380 behind schedule and over budget and the military A400M in a similar situation. The A350 design and specs are likely frozen; Airbus, in committing themselves to the superjumbo market, has done so at the expense of their original and massively successful product line: the conventional widebody airliner.