The 767 assembly line at the Boeing Co.’s Everett plant looks solid for now, a company executive said last week.
But whether those 767 workers will be building refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force is a more difficult question, according to a second top executive.
“At the rate we’re going, we’re not going to have a new tanker delivered until 2015 or 2016,” said Jim Albaugh, president of Boeing’s defense business, in comments reported last week by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Register.
“Quite frankly, I’m a little skeptical whether or not we’re ever going to see a tanker program,” Albaugh said.
Tankers were a hot topic last week. Boeing Commercial Airplanes marketing chief Randy Baseler was asked about them at an aerospace industry summit sponsored by Reuters.
Boeing also took out a full-page ad in The Washington Post, touting the 767 tanker as “the world’s most advanced refueling aircraft.”
Baseler said Boeing has enough commercial jet orders for the 767 to keep the Everett assembly line chugging along for the near future. The company has taken 14 new orders for the twin-aisle jet this year.
Given that, Boeing is no longer poised to close the line, he told Reuters. “We don’t have to make a decision until well into next year sometime.”
And if the Air Force decides to buy 767s, the line will keep running longer, Baseler said. “We will keep the (767) platform going if it continues to be a military platform, whether it is for a tanker or for other applications such as freighters.”
But there seems to be a question of whether the Air Force wants 767 tankers. There’s increasing scuttlebutt to the effect that the Pentagon would rather see an aerial refueling tanker based on the larger 777.
That would be bad news for the 767 line, which is winding down as Boeing brings its replacement, the 787, to market. But it’s not necessarily bad news for Boeing. Analysts say the 777 is a far superior plane to anything Airbus has to offer, making it more likely that Boeing would capture the order.
And some generals have suggested that the smart thing to do would be to upgrade the aging KC-135 tanker fleet instead of replacing it.
Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne told Reuters that such a move, obviously, would mean less need for new tankers.
“I don’t want to mislead the manufacturers to believe that there’s going to be this massive buy, then at the end of the day you only buy 10. It would never be 10, but you would buy less than 500,” Wynne told the news service.
If that’s what the Air Force wants to do, Albaugh said, than “certainly we’re very happy doing upgrades to the KC-135.”
The Air Force just needs to make up its mind, he said, according to the Post-Dispatch. “If and when they define their requirements, we’ll be there with a small airplane, a medium-size airplane or a large airplane.”
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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