If you’re reading this after the latest trip to fill up your car or truck has drained your wallet, you’re probably not feeling best disposed towards the oil rich states of the Gulf. Their control of supplies has been partly blamed for the dizzying ascent of crude oil prices.

 
But the big aircraft manufacturers who spent the week at the Farnborough International Air Show in the UK last week must be feeling pretty grateful to their Gulf-based customers. Etihad, the United Arab Emirates’ national carrier, ordered 100 Airbus and Boeing passenger jets, spending a cool 20 billion dollars. What’s been an oil crisis for the rest of us has been a bonanza for Middle Eastern countries who are living high off crude prices hitting 145 dollars a barrel.  So they can invest in new toys.

 
Airbus and Boeing had a good show: between them they amassed 63 billion dollars of orders. Airbus trumped its rival, with 247 orders compared to 197. But without the likes of Etihad spending freely, the picture might have been less encouraging. And when you consider that each company sold more than 1,300 aircraft last year, and that Airbus thinks it’ll take 850 orders this year, it’s clear just how sluggish the market’s become.

 
EADS Chief Executive Louis Gallois also raised the spectre of more job cuts by telling the Daily Telegraph that moving Europe’s biggest aerospace firm out of the Eurozone was a “priority.” Airbus does business in dollars and the currency’s been battered by the strong pound and more recently, the Euro. "We could go to, say, Mexico or Brazil," Gallois said. Another option would be Tunisia, where Airbus supplier Latecoere is building a factory. With an estimated 10 thousand jobs already due to be cut by EADS, it’s a potential bombshell for Europe at a time when many countries are in serious danger of recession this year.