Its just the timing – the orders will generally come with a deposit but that is not recognisable as revenue in standard accounting practice. The revenue comes when you deliver the plane (or the customer cancels and bails on his deposit). There may be some accounting rules that allow partial revenue recognition as the plane is being built but I’m not sure about that. So while ATR took deposits on 90 planes it’ll only show on their balance sheet as an increase in cash and increase in deferred revenue.

Also remember that the turnover from the orders may be spread out over multiple years if the customers order for delivery in say 2006, 2007, 2008 so while one might expect revenue in the current fiscal year to increase it may not jump all the way up in the same magnitudeas it’ll be spread over the time.

Remember the old saw:

Q. How do you make a small fortune in the airline business?”

A. “start with a large one!”

Still true – not all LCCs survive and thrive like Ryanair, Easyjet and its going to get harder as the market moves towards saturation point. Be the first to do what Ryanair would like to do – fly for free and make your money on the add-ons like gambling etc.

Doesn’t sound like your in the av business at all and if you’re posting on this here doesn’t sound like you’ve got the deep pockets personally or the backing of deep pockets. If you have, that’s a start but then you need management expertise.

Lastly, and to answer your original question. IMHO, passengers generally don’t care what they fly on as long as it is cheap (LCC passengers especially) or meets their needs for convenience and value. There was an article in the Globe and Mail (arguably Canada’s national newspaper) written by a journalist about the socio-economic impact on Europe of the LCCs and how they’re changing the face of the world. Actually a good article, but even this guy thought he was flying on a Ryanair Airbus! and he has fact checkers to research his story.

Great win for Boeing.

Can anyone enlighten me as to the difference between an “Option” and a “Purchase Right”.

At times these terms seem to be used interchangeably but they do appear to have different meanings.