It would cost about $255,000 a month to lease a McDonnell Douglas MD-88, a popular midsize plane.

The midsize plane is sold out through 2013.

At the Paris Air Show, which begins Monday, Airbus would have liked to announce its new midsize plane, the A350, as well as a new management team.

In its annual market forecast, released in London on Wednesday, Boeing projected that the world's airlines would order 5,600 midsize planes over the next 20 years.

Boeing sees airlines serving a proliferating number of direct routes between cities, with midsize planes.

Airbus is also facing some trouble in its rivalry with Boeing, as its midsize wide-body plane, the A350, is lagging behind Boeing's 787.

But the midsize plane it announced here on Monday goes by the name A350 XWB - as in "extra wide body."

It is developing a fuel-efficient midsize plane, the 7E7 Dreamliner, to connect cities that do not generate the traffic to justify a 500-seat aircraft.

But the midsize plane it announced goes by the name A350 XWB.

For its part, Airbus says it always recognized that there was a market for a midsize plane that could fly long distances.