BOEING ANNOUNCES $6.3 BILLION IN PLANE ORDERS.

Byline: Daily News Wire Services

Boeing upstaged rivals Airbus Industrie and McDonnell Douglas at London's Farnborough International Air Show, announcing orders for $6.3 billion in commercial jetliners.

The dollar value of the Boeing orders was 20 percent greater than all of Boeing's orders at 1995's Paris International Air Show. Boeing said the announcements bring total announced orders for the year to 407. With four months left in the year, 1996 already has become Boeing's biggest order year since 1990.

Rival Airbus expects to announce more orders today. But spokesman David Velupillai would not comment on a report in The Sunday Telegraph that said the deals are worth $3.5 billion.

Through the end of July, Airbus already had racked up 189 orders, worth $14 billion compared to the $7 billion that last year's orders were worth.

Meantime, McDonnell Douglas Corp., hoping to bounce back after losing market share in recent years, said it had landed $710 million in new orders, including a $345 million deal for 10 new and three used MD-80s from Trans World Airlines.

``If there's a way to measure confidence, it's obviously the orders,'' said Mike Sears, president of Douglas Aircraft Co.

The numbers so far this year are looking good for the world's big airplane makers.

Still, Pacific Crest Securities analyst Bill Whitlow had a lukewarm response to Boeing's showing.

``What you've got to figure out in this . . . gaggle of planes is which ones are really new,'' Whitlow said. ``Are British Airways' really new orders? It seems to me they were certainly telegraphing it a couple weeks ago,'' Whitlow said.

As the competition between Boeing and Airbus has grown increasingly fierce in recent years, both have been known to ``announce'' already announced orders.