Airbus has had a pretty good week at the Paris Air show, including some desperately needed good news for the A350 program. Nearly 200 of the almost 550 planes "sold" at the event are of that model, which until this week lacked a proper customer base. The trick is, as is a trend with Airbus, 190 of the planes in this week's announcements are "commitments," not firm orders. Sometimes those materialize into planes actually being sold, sometimes they don't.

The bad news for Airbus is industry titan Steve Udvar-Hazy still has concerns with the A350. One of Airbus's biggest challenges right now might be getting that addressed.

Meanwhile, Boeing has had a solid week, including talk of a huge potential order from Delta for 125 787's later this year, as well as news that the 787 program remains on track. If Boeing can indeed get that plane assembly line rolling as scheduled it would be a sharp contrast to the painful delays Airbus has experienced with the A380, not to mention a direct challenge to Airbus to match such performance with the A350, which is already five years behind the 787 in terms of scheduled time of first availability to customers.