Airbus (AIR.PA) is on course to break aerospace order records in 2023 after a buying spree from European airlines and a brisk month so far in deliveries, industry sources said on Tuesday.

Orders for a total of almost 200 jets from easyJet and Lufthansa on Tuesday looked set to push gross orders so far this year above the record of around 1,800 in 2014, the peak of the last major cycle, as airlines gamble on a scarcity of jets.

Gross or unadjusted orders give a rough indication of the pace of market activity in a particular year, though analysts say a more widely watched indicator of a jetmaker's performance is "net orders", which exclude cancellations and conversions.

Those figures will not be officially available until January, but the sources said there are strong chances that Airbus also will breach the previous record of more than 1,500 net orders.

Airbus declined comment on possible end-year totals before a full-year announcement expected around Jan. 11.

Airlines are scrambling to order new planes to renew existing fleets amid fears of a shortage in coming years.

Both Airbus and Boeing, which also posted a key Lufthansa order on Tuesday, could announce more deals this month, buoyed by the snapback in demand after the COVID-19 pandemic, industry sources said.

The looming record caps the decades-long sales career of Airbus Chief Commercial Officer Christian Scherer as he prepares to become CEO of the overall civil jetliner business in the new year.

The 16,000-plane tally of former Airbus sales chief John Leahy in the 1994-2017 period remains the industry's most sustained sales haul.

On Friday, Turkish Airlines announced 220 new Airbus orders plus 10 A350-900s which had already been on Airbus' books without the buyer's name being immediately disclosed. It has indicated it plans to place a comparable mega-order with Boeing. (Reuters)