The Boeing Co. picked up its first 787 deal with an African airline Friday when Ethiopian Airlines announced it signed a preliminary agreement for five Dreamliners.
The agreement, which pushes Boeing’s announced orders total to 191 787s, gives the airline the option to add five more of the jets to the order.
The deal would be worth more than $1.2 billion at list prices, if Ethiopian were to take all 10 planes. However, it’s likely that the airline, which is being considered a launch customer, is getting a discount.
Boeing will deliver the airline’s first 787 in 2008.
Ethiopian has been flying Boeing jets since the 1960s, and now operates a fleet of 13 Boeing 767s, 757s and 737s, which it uses on routes across Africa and into Asia, Europe and North America. The airline also has eight turboprop planes for domestic routes.
“You just can’t ignore how far Boeing has advanced the technology of commercial aviation with the 787 Dreamliner,” Ethiopian Airlines chief executive Ato Girma Wake said in a statement.
A Boeing spokeswoman said the airline wants to use the longer-range planes to fly nonstop to Beijing from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. The airline, which was the first in the West to fly regular routes to China, now offers that service with a stop in India.
The airline is ordering the 787-8 model, which has a range of nearly 9,800 miles and will typically carry about 225 passengers in a three-class cabin. However, Ethiopian plans to configure the cabins with two classes of seating and is considering adding more seats, which would give it a capacity of between 254 and 320 passengers.
If it takes all 10 planes, Friday’s order would be the biggest in the airline’s history. Previously, its largest order was in November 2002, when it ordered three 737s and three 767s.
The announcement puts Boeing on the edge of achieving the 200 announced orders it projected having by the end of 2004. Boeing missed that target, but analysts said that wouldn’t matter as long as Boeing picked up the orders early this year.
That has happened. Last week, the government of China signed a preliminary agreement for 60 787s for six Chinese airlines. Friday’s agreement with Ethiopian followed that.
So far, Boeing has concluded contract talks with three airlines – All Nippon Airways, Blue Panorama and Air New Zealand – for 56 787s.
In other news, Boeing has confirmed it has reached a preliminary agreement to sell three 737s to a privately owned Libyan airline, Buraq Air, which plans to take three 737-800s, with options on up to three more, the company said. The deal is not yet final.
Buraq Air is Libya’s first privately owned airline. It started flying in 2001 and now operates a fleet that includes three older Boeing 727s and four Russian-built cargo jets.
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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