The year is winding to a close, but news continues coming out of the Boeing Co. like jet exhaust out the back of a 777 engine.
On Thursday, the union engineers and technical workers at Boeing will announce the outcome of the vote-by-mail election on their proposed new contracts.
It likely will be a low-key announcement. Union officials recommended that members approve the proposed contracts and expect them to be ratified by a wide margin.
Negotiators reached preliminary agreements on the Puget Sound-area contracts – one for engineers and one for technical workers – on Nov. 15.
The proposed three-year agreements would:
* Raise the average engineer’s pay to $95,884 and the average technical worker’s pay to $71,134.
* Grant workers up to 20 days of extra pay a year if the company hits performance targets under an employee incentive program.
* Maintain health care programs with no increase in cost to the workers, increase pensions to $70 a month per year of service and increase the company’s match to 401(k) savings plans.
The proposed contracts cover about 12,100 engineers and 5,700 technical workers that SPEEA represents around Puget Sound.
Separate contract talks for about 800 SPEEA-represented Boeing engineers in Wichita, Kan., are not going nearly as well.
The union’s Kansas bargaining team has recommended that its members reject Boeing’s proposed contract. Union spokesman Bob Brewer said the proposal “treats us like second-class citizens and isolates us in an attempt to pay Wichita engineers below-market wages.”
The union has called an all-hands meeting for today to discuss the proposal. Voting in Wichita continues until Dec. 5.
Meanwhile, here in Everett, Boeing has squeezed a little more mileage out of the 777-300ER. The company announced Tuesday that it had delivered the first of the jets with fuel-saving enhancements to Air France.
“With fuel prices skyrocketing, we are excited that we were able to enhance the 777-300ER jetliner so it burns less fuel,” said Lars Andersen, Boeing vice president in charge of 777 programs.
By tweaking the engines and design, engineers at Boeing and GE Aircraft Engines were able to get 1.4 percent better fuel efficiency out of the 777-300ER, which is the 365-seat big brother of Boeing’s ultra-long-range 777-200LR Worldliner.
That should save airlines that fly the -300ER about 200,000 gallons of fuel a year, Boeing said.
The improvements came in three areas, Boeing said:
* General Electric modified its GE90-115B engines, which are the most powerful ever on a commercial jet.
* Boeing engineers found ways to reduce the weight of the planes, including lighter air ducts and main deck floor panels.
* Boeing engineers improved the plane’s aerodynamics by tweaking the cabin air intakes and the vortex generators, which are small plates on the surface of the wing that modify the way air flows, reducing drag.
All future 777-300ERs – including the 24 ordered by Emirates last week – will incorporate the improvements, and Boeing plans to retrofit the changes on the 27 planes already in service.
Finally, we could know next week whether Boeing has landed an order for up to 100 jets from Qantas.
The Australian airline’s board of directors is set to meet Dec. 7, and it is expected to decide on whether to buy a mix of 787s, 777s and 747-8s from Boeing, or take Airbus up on its competing offer of A340s, A350s and A380s. The deal would carry a list price of more than $15 billion.
Coincidentally, Boeing needs to land 101 orders between now and New Year’s Eve to make this its best year ever for orders. As of Nov. 22, Boeing reported a net of 776 orders for the year.
In 1988, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas combined to sell a net of 877 planes. The two companies merged in 1997.
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@ heraldnet.com.
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