737 replacements, 747 Advanced and Goodrich expansion

Those were the topics of my column this week. Here’s a link, for those of you who don’t get The Herald delivered to your door. (Btw, you can call 425-339-3200 and the friendly people there will fix that for you.)

http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/05/05/18/100bus_corliss001.cfm

I did catch up with analyst Richard Aboulafia after deadline. He’s discounting the odds of the small twin-aisle plane ever replacing the 737, saying it’s just “too expensive to push through the air.” The whole thing “seems kind of science fair-y,” he said.

But Boeing’s wind-tunnel testing on 747 Advanced models did strick him as being a significant tea leaf to read: “Those things ain’t cheap, and with spending comes greater likelihood of commitment.”