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Boeing may be losing headlines to its European rival but it's winning the battle of the order books.

Airbus Industrie has drawn the imagination of the public and the attention of the press with 32 orders for its proposed A-3XX, which will be the largest airplane ever built. Boeing is still trying to land its first order for an enlarged version of its 747 jumbo, the biggest passenger plane now.

But the superjumbo headlines obscure their real battlefield: the everyday fight for unglamorous workhorse planes, say industry analysts.

Through Sept. 30, Boeing has announced orders for 467 jets compared with 306 for Airbus. By year's end, Airbus expects to pass 400 orders and to reach as many as 500, according to Airbus Chief Executive Noel Forgeard.

No matter who wins that battle, Boeing is already far ahead of the 389 orders it had in all of 1999, the first year that Airbus beat Boeing in orders.

And as important, between England's Farnborough air show in late July -- a favored venue for announcing aircraft orders -- and Sept. 30, Boeing has taken as many orders for its 737 model jets alone as Airbus has for all models in its lineup.

During that period, Boeing posted orders for 133 jets. Most are for proven products like its 737 new-generation twin-engine jets.

By contrast, during the same period, Airbus racked up one high- profile order from Singapore Airlines for its 555-seat A-3XX, but beyond that, it won 86 orders, most for its A-320 twins that compete with the 737.

"Farnborough and other air shows are scripted set pieces; the real battle is away from the show tents and pavilions," says Teal Group aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia.

Cynics may say that Airbus is taking all the risk in pushing ahead with its $20 billion project to launch the superjumbo. But with its focus on selling the A-3XX, "Airbus is, I fear, very much in danger of putting all of its resources in a bid for a speculative market and ignoring bread-and-butter business," Aboulafia says.

Boeing has learned to avoid the kind of risk that dragged it into posting its first deficit in 50 years in 1997.

That's when it tripped over its own promises to build record numbers of airliners and ended up with snarled assembly lines, embarrassing parts shortages, production mistakes that cost one high- level executive his job and a tarnished reputation.

That has changed. For the year's third quarter, Boeing's net income rose almost a third to $609 million, up from $477 million earned in the 1999 period.

That has helped push up operating margins on jets from 6.2% in 1999's third quarter to 9.9% in the quarter just completed, Chief Executive Phil Condit said Wednesday.

Boeing shares rose 25 cents to $60.75 Wednesday.

As Boeing has overcome production-line problems, it has reduced the worker-hours needed to construct a 737 from 30,000 during the late 1990s to less than 10,000 hours now, Condit said.

With its recovery, Boeing also has been able to take a few risks.

In February, Boeing said it would build two long-range versions of its 777 twin-engine jet even though it didn't have any airlines committed to buy them.

That is contrary to Boeing's stated policy of not committing to a new model until it has firm customers.

Since then, though, Boeing has won orders for the 777 models from key Asian customers such as Japan Airlines. This month, Air France ordered 10.

That's a breakthrough because Air France is perceived as leaning toward Airbus, Lehman Bros. analyst Joseph Campbell says.

Still, Boeing's world is very different from the one of just five years ago, when it could scoff at the Airbus goal of winning half of the world market for airliners.

Airbus is close to that now, and no one at Boeing or anywhere else is scoffing.