The year's biggest air show opens near London next week, with all eyes on planemaker Airbus and its secretive plans for a new, mid-sized plane to challenge resurgent rival Boeing.
The two planemakers waged a feisty battle at the biennial event last time as the biggest winners in USD$21 billion worth of business deals announced.
This year, Airbus faces mounting pressure to reveal its mystery plane, which analysts say could cost USD$10 billion to build.
Industry sources and analysts say Airbus's top salesman, John Leahy, will be working hard to sell the concept and could have deals to announce at the Farnborough air show, which opens on Monday.
Airbus has wrestled for more than a year with the design of a model named the A350 which is now likely to be shelved, some analysts believe, as the planemaker responds to calls from would-be buyers for a wider fuselage and other advances.
"It looks increasingly likely to us that Airbus will scrap plans for the A350 aircraft and launch a brand new A370," Credit Suisse analysts wrote in an research report.
Analysts are keen to see how the 10 customers already signed up for the A350 respond to the likely change of course.
Finnair, which has signed up for nine of the A350 model, said this week it was happy to wait longer to get a better plane but was not prepared to pay more for it.
Boeing does not have a 787 flying yet, but the model could cause some excitement if the US planemaker announces it will build a bigger version of it dubbed the 787-10.
If that announcement comes, it is likely to include the name of a launch customer, taking a potential deal away from the new Airbus offering.
Boeing watchers will also be looking for the unidentified customer listed on the planemaker's web site as the first buyer of the latest and largest version of the 747 jumbo, the 747-8 Intercontinental.
Boeing has bounced back after losing the orders race to Airbus for five straight years, outselling Airbus 4-to-1 so far this year.
Airbus will be flying the A380 superjumbo, the subject of a crisis at the planemaker last month after it announced that complications in wiring the mammoth planes would slow deliveries over the next three years.
Leahy has flagged 20 orders for the model by year-end and Farnborough is a likely place to announce at least some of those, analysts say.
Embraer is set to fly its 190 airliner at Farnborough, one of its largest models at 108 seats and part of the Brazilian planemaker's foray into the niche just below the model ranges of Airbus and Boeing.
