Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

Should anybody harbor any doubts, two recent events confirmed that the mid-decade airline-order boom has ended: Airbus announced A320 production cutbacks and Ryanair has come looking for bargain-basement prices for single-aisle airplanes. Airbus now plans to cut single-aisle production from 36 to 34 a month starting in October and possibly to a lower rate later. Twin-aisle production remains at 8.5 per month, despite a previously planned increase. Although the company aims to deliver about the same number of airplanes it shipped last year, “I do not exclude further cuts,” said chief executive Tom Enders. 
But as Airbus “manages” build rates following delivery deferrals and cancelled orders, it hardly blinked at Ryanair’s request for proposals to supply huge numbers of new aircraft. This month, the Irish low-cost carrier told AIN it had entered “early negotiations” for 200 to 300 new single-aisle aircraft for delivery between 2012 and 2017.
Knowing how Ryanair operates–with its proclivity for ordering extensive capacity at discount prices while simultaneously re-negotiating outstanding orders–Airbus quickly rejected the advance, at least publicly leaving any deal making to its U.S. competitor.
Since 1998 Boeing and Ryanair have staged numerous, sometimes overlapping order announcements, which if counted separately would have covered almost 540 Boeing aircraft. In actuality, Ryanair placed firm orders for 338 airplanes, some of which the airline received at lower prices than originally agreed upon after renegotiation during subsequent order proceedings. 
“We don’t plan a sales campaign with Ryanair, which would be very expensive and very time consuming,” concluded Airbus chief commercial officer John Leahy.

Airbus Retrenches, Rejects Ryanair’s Advances

Should anybody harbor any doubts, two recent events confirmed that the mid-decade airline-order boom has ended: Airbus announced A320 production cutbacks a

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