FARNBOROUGH, England (AP) — European plane maker Airbus emerged as the clear winner at the Farnborough International Airshow yesterday after racking up more orders than its US rival Boeing Co.

An agreement to sell South American consortium Synergy Aerospace 10 aircraft worth US$2.1 billion took Airbus' total orders to 247 planes worth US$38.7 billion at catalogue prices. Boeing, meanwhile, boosted its show tally to 197 planes worth $23.1 billion with an apparent headline grabbing deal with Air China for 45 of its planes worth $6.3 billion.

But the Air China deal, along with two others from Etihad Airways and Malaysia Airways, were already on Boeing's books attributed to unidentified buyers — removing those from the tally, the Chicago-based plane maker's deals at the world's biggest air show drop to just $5.6 billion.

Demand from Asian and Middle Eastern Airlines and plane leasing companies have dispelled some of the gloom cast by high fuel price and slowing economic growth over the week-long show outside London. Deals announced at the show pushed the combined Boeing and Airbus total closer to the 506 from the Le Bourget air show last year than many airlines had expected.

Cash-strapped carriers from Europe and the US have kept their wallets shut.

Airbus yesterday held a self-congratulatory press conference, with the Toulouse, France-based company's chief salesman John Leahy saying the figures defied the "doom and gloom" that many industry watchers had expected to pervade this year's air show given soaring oil prices and the global credit crisis.

"We think it ended up pretty well," Leahy said, adding that Airbus viewed the practice of placing orders on the books before confirming buyers as "quite silly".

"We are quite comfortable with the fact that we are going to have 50 percent of the world market," he added, when asked if the company was disappointed that Etihad had split its order between the two major plane makers. "We have never had a goal to do what they have done in the past years and dominate the market with 80 percent or 90 percent."

Asian and Middle Eastern carriers are banking on a degree of insulation from the global credit squeeze and expected growth in infrastructure and tourism to justify purchases, while the leasing companies are relying on the likelihood many carriers elsewhere will be keen to budget by renting, rather than buying, planes until the economy improves.