Airbus Denies Massive Price Cut

Filton-based planemaker Airbus has denied that it had to cutprices by more than 45 per cent in order to win this week's key orderfrom easyJet.

The company on Monday announced it had won a firm order from low-cost airline easyJet for 120 A319 planes.

But reports suggested that the company had discounted the closeto-GBP4 billion list price of the planes in order to win the businessfrom rival Boeing.

Noel Forgeard, Airbus chief executive, said rumours of 45 per centdiscounts were "just ridiculous." And he insisted both that thecontract had been profitable for the company and that its price hadnot been far from Boeing's price.

He said: "What really made a …