Long-range project

  • By Bryan Corliss / Herald Writer
  • Sunday, January 30, 2005 9:00pm
  • Business

It took British explorer James Cook, on his first trip to Australia, about 20 months to get there in his sailing ship, a long journey with stops in Rio de Janeiro, Tahiti and New Zealand, the whole while battling wind, wave, scurvy – and occasionally hostile natives.

Next month, the Boeing Co. will start flight testing on a new jet that will make that same trip, non-stop, in fewer than 20 hours. Passengers will spend the whole time watching movies, and arrive to be greeted by polite but firm Australian customs agents asking if they have anything to declare.

Range: 10,800 miles

Capacity: 301 passengers

Sales: Five, to Pakistan International Airlines and EVA Airlines of Taiwan.

Key dates: Rollout, Feb. 15; first flight, March; delivery to PIA and first commercial flights, early 2006.

With its range of more than 10,000 miles, Boeing’s new 777-200LR can connect just about every pair of cities on the planet – Los Angeles and Johannesburg, Dubai and Santiago, London and Sydney.

“It’s the most technologically advanced airplane out there today,” said Lars Andersen, the manager of Boeing’s extended-range 777 program. “It goes between just about any two cities you’d want to go.”

But while it’s a technological marvel, the 200LR has not proven to be a financial winner for Boeing, which so far has sold only five of the jets.

“We would have liked to have sold more by now,” Andersen acknowledged. But Boeing still believes in the plane. “We don’t think it’s going to be an unpopular airplane,” he said.

The plane fills a niche in Boeing’s vision of the future of aviation.

While Airbus has focused its efforts on building the 555-seat A380, which will fly between the world’s largest cities, Boeing has worked on a family of longer-range, 300-plus-seat planes that can bypass those busy hubs and connect more cities directly.

It’s a challenge for designers – larger planes can carry more fuel aloft, which means they can fly farther.

In 2002, Boeing rolled out the first of the series, the 777-300ER, a 365-passenger jet equipped with the most powerful engines ever installed on commercial airplane. The 200LR is the smaller sister airplane, using the same engines and wings on a fuselage that’s about 32 feet shorter to create a plane that can fly more than 1,000 miles farther.

With range like that, Boeing argues, airlines can make money using the smaller planes to connect secondary cities that don’t have enough potential passengers to fill up jumbo jets – particularly across the wide-open expanses of the Pacific Ocean.

And passengers, executives maintain, will be happier flying one plane directly from Point A to Point B than they are now flying from Point A to one major hub, changing planes to fly to a second major hub, then changing planes yet again for a connecting flight to their final destination.

Boeing projects it will sell between 500 and 600 of the longer-range 777s over the life of the program.

So far, sales of the larger 777-300ER have been solid. Boeing has taken orders for 99 of them since the first in March 2000, from 13 airlines. But only two airlines have ordered the 200LR – EVA Air of Taiwan (three orders) and Pakistan International Airlines (two).

Where no one has gone

The problem is that the 200LR is a different kind of airplane, capable of flying routes no airline has flown before, Andersen said. Boeing launched the program into a post-Sept. 11world where airlines were battling to hang onto the business they had, not looking to expand.

“We think it’s going to start generating a lot of interest from our customers as the passenger traffic comes back,” he said. “We really need the airline industry to come back strong and start new service.”

The plane also has had the misfortune of coming on the market at a time when Airbus has been pushing hard to win sales of its superjumbo A380, said Paul Nesbet, an analyst with JSA Research in Rhode Island.

With Airbus reportedly slashing prices in half to win A380 sales, airlines in the market for long-range jets have chosen the bigger plane. “That has delayed orders for the 777,” Nesbet said.

And with U.S. airlines so broke they “couldn’t buy one if they had to,” it’s no surprise that 200LR sales have been slow, Nesbet said. “It’s just delaying what will be a good strong market.”

But analyst Richard Aboulafia with the Teal Group in Virginia is not so sure.

The 200LR is a niche airplane, he said. There just aren’t that many airlines that need the kind of range it offers, and those who do already have Airbus’ A340-600, which has a range of close to 9,000 miles – enough to fly many of the same routes.

“Airbus did get there first,” Aboulafia said.

Boeing plans to aggressively market the jet this year. It plans to take one of the flight test planes to the Paris Air Show this summer, and then continue flying it around the world, combining flight testing with stops to visit potential customers.

“We’ll take the airplane to an airline and let the executives get on the plane,” Andersen said. That can be “a significant sales tool.”

Competing for cargo

Boeing also expects to win orders with a cargo version of the jet.

The company in November announced it was ready to offer a freighter version of the 777, using the 200LR’s powerful engines to create a cargo carrier that could fly farther than any other.

The 777 freighter won’t have the volume of Airbus’ new A380 freighters, but the lighter jet and powerful engines mean it will be able to carry cargo that are more dense – more pounds of cargo per cubic foot of space – than the bigger jet, Andersen said.

And if you pack it lighter, carrying loads only as dense as the A380 can carry, the 777 freighter can fly about 1,000 miles farther, he said.

Still, Boeing has yet to sell any cargo versions of the plane – although an executive with Singapore Airlines Cargo told Bloomberg News last month that the carrier is “very interested” in it.

Sales will come, Andersen said.

“The growth in the freighter market has been significantly more than the passenger market,” he said. “There’s some efficiencies that this freighter’s going to have that haven’t existed before.

“We think we have a great solution,” he concluded.

The 200LR is likely to be the last 777 derivative Boeing builds, Andersen said. “We’re always studying things, but right now that pretty much completes the family,” he said. “We’ll keep it as a good companion in the Boeing product line with the 7E7.”

Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.

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