Alwyn Scott and Tim Hepher Paris
Boeing was designing a larger version of its flagship Dreamliner aircraft, it announced at the Paris Airshow yesterday, sharpening the battle with Airbus in the booming market for fuel-efficient, long-distance jets.
The announcement of the 787-10 Dreamliner, with 102 firm orders worth nearly $30 billion (R297bn) at list prices, is a vote of support for the lightweight, carbon-composite jet just months after the first version was grounded by battery problems.
It came shortly after Airbus clinched an $11.5bn order from British budget airline easyJet for 135 of its A320neos on day two of the aerospace event.
Boeing and Airbus are slugging it out for the lion’s share of the $100bn-a-year global jet market. In the past few years, the battle has centred on smaller models. But the focus shifted in recent months to the next generation of larger jets, with Airbus successfully completing a test flight of its answer to the Dreamliner – the A350 – on the eve of the Paris show.
“We promised a strong launch and we have achieved it,” Boeing chief executive Jim McNerney said yesterday.
The buyers of the new 787-10 are Air Lease and Singapore Airlines with 30 planes each, United Airlines with 20, British Airways with 12, and GE Capital Services with 10.
The third variant of the Dreamliner family will have a range of 13 000km, with seating for up to 330 passengers.
It would be 25 percent more efficient to operate than current comparable planes, Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Ray Conner said.
The 787-8, introduced in late 2011, was grounded worldwide in January after its lithium-ion batteries overheated on two jets in about a week. It resumed commercial service last month after Boeing installed a redesigned battery system on the 50 jets in service.
The new 787-10 plane “will be one of the most powerful wide-body aircraft for decades ahead”, Air Lease chief executive Steven Udvar-Hazy said at the signing ceremony. “We believe it will be very profitable for us.”
In a moment of levity, Conner introduced McNerney to speak before the ceremonial contracts had been signed and then said: “I think we forgot to do the contract.”
“I forgot to bring my cheque book,” Udvar-Hazy quipped. “I’ll give you an IOU.”
Boeing said it was already designing the new jet and that it expected to begin final assembly in 2017.
United said it expected to get its first 787-10 in 2018, while Udvar-Hazy said Air Lease would take delivery in 2019. United’s order includes 10 new planes and 10 conversions from the earlier 787-9 model, due for first flight later this year.
Air Lease also ordered an extra three 787-9s for a total of 33 new aircraft. It already had 12 of the 787-9s on order. Airbus’s A320neo order from easyJet included 35 current generation planes and 100 next-generation versions, with options for a further 100 aircraft.
The order followed a bitter competition with Boeing, which was keen to win back one of the largest budget airlines a decade after losing to Airbus in a scrap that got sucked into the world’s largest trade dispute over aircraft aid. – Reuters