SYDNEY (Dow Jones) – Airbus hopes to deliver a similar number of aircraft in 2010 as it does this year amid a gradual recovery in the global aviation industry that has started now and will reach its completion in 2011, an executive with the company said.

John Leahy, chief operating officer, customers, at Airbus said the recent slump in air travel "doesn't look that bad" compared to previous industry downturns and that the number of canceled delivery requests received by Airbus is continuing to decrease from a peak just before Christmas last year.

"History never repeats itself but I think you'll agree that history tends to rhyme," he told reporters, referring to the recoveries in air travel demand that followed the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US and the 2003 SARS crisis in Asia.

The European aircraft manufacturer, a unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co.'s (5730.FR), will provide a forecast in January of its deliveries in 2010.

"The goal would be to try and keep it as flat as possible", Leahy told Dow Jones Newswires, having earlier reiterated that Airbus expects to deliver at least the same number of aircraft this year as the 483 it delivered in 2008, and possibly as many as 500.

The stable production forecast and relatively upbeat outlook comments correlate with a partial recovery in investment markets since March and a prediction last month by the International Air Transport Association that losses from commercial airlines will narrow to US$3.8 billion in 2010 from an expected US$11 billion this year.

Still, IATA said that while traffic is expected to increase next year yields will remain weak with revenues for carriers not expected to return to 2008 levels until 2012 at the earliest.