The Boeing Co. will land its launch order for the 7E7 Dreamliner within the next few months, the executive in charge of the program predicted Wednesday.
That first sale will be made shortly, Boeing senior vice president Mike Bair said in a telephone conference call. "We’re extremely confident that we’re going to do that," he said. "My sense is that it will be sooner rather than later."
Boeing has been offering the 7E7 to airlines since December, but has not yet landed its launch customer, the key first buyer for the new jet.
One of the reasons for Bair’s optimism is Boeing’s decision on pricing the new plane. Bair said it will carry a catalog price of about $120 million — give or take $5 million or so based on options. That’s the same price Boeing charged for the 767-300ER, one of the planes that the new Dreamliner is designed to replace.
The sticker price is usually just a starting point for negotiations. "Nobody would pay the catalog price," Bair said.
But the fact is that airlines will get a much more capable plane for about the same price they paid for their last mid-sized jets, Bair said. The 7E7 will be similar in size and passenger capacity as the 767, but it will be more fuel-efficient and have more cargo capacity than same-sized Boeing or Airbus jets.
"It is a better economic machine in almost every respect for our customers," he said. Given that, the decision on the price "pleasantly surprised a lot of people."
Boeing met with several potential Asian buyers in Hong Kong last week, and also is talking with potential U.S. and European customers, Bair said. One of them will be the launch customer, it’s just a matter of "getting the sale made, getting the agreement done with the airline," he said. "It’s kind of who gets there first."
It also will depend on the size of the order the first customer wants to place, Bair said. If it’s not big enough, Boeing could wait for another order to launch the program.
While Bair said the launch customer should be named soon, he said that many of the suppliers who will provide 7E7 parts may not set up facilities to assemble them in Everett as was earlier suggested.
Suppliers "don’t have to put a facility up here," Bair said. "They could chose to do the work anywhere."
That comment is different from one made last month by the executive in charge of managing suppliers for the 7E7. He told an aerospace industry group that he believes companies that will provide major pieces of the new jet will end up bringing their parts to Everett, where they will assemble them in their own facilities near Boeing’s factory.
Boeing’s work on a modified 747 freighter to haul Dreamliner parts means the suppliers could fly completed sections to Everett from anywhere in the world, Bair said.
Boeing is working on plans for the new 747 freighters, looking for used jumbo jets to buy and interviewing companies that could do the modification work, Bair said.
On other topics, Bair said Dreamliner designers are close to completing the basic configuration of the new jet. They’ve decided to increase its fuel capacity, which will allow airlines to fly 9,775 miles, which would be 800 miles farther than previously considered. Most airlines will use that extra capacity to carry extra cargo, rather than fly to farther-flung cities, Bair predicted.
Bair also said that Boeing engineers are working on design plans that would allow airlines to swap engines made by one manufacturer for those made by another in as little as 24 hours.
That would be revolutionary. Now, passenger jets carry so many components that are customized to one particular make of engine that it takes a month or more to change from one brand to another.
The advantage, Bair said, is that planes that could use more than one manufacturer’s engine would have higher resale values, and that would make them easier for airlines to finance at the outset.
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