Dreamliner on Track; Boeing Orders to Fall Short

Boeing

BA loading...

Quote  |  Chart  |  News  |  Profile

[BA  Loading...      ()   ] is on track to deliver the first 787 Dreamliner aircraft to Japan's All Nippon Airways by the end of this year, Vice President of Marketing at Boeing Commercial Airplanes Randy Tinseth told CNBC on Tuesday.

"That's the plan and we're on track for that," said Tinseth. "We have two airplanes in the flight test right now. We'll have two more by the end of this month and we'll have six flying by the middle of the year, so it's a very exciting time."

While Tinseth admitted that Boeing had a number of problems getting the Dreamliner off the ground, he said most kinks have since been ironed out.

"I don't think there's any question that we did have issues at the beginning of the program. We disappointed our customers." he said.

"So what we've done is we've brought some of that manufacturing work into the Boeing company. We're actually working to diversify our production sites by adding a site in South Carolina, and we brought in a new leader, for BCA, who has a great deal of program management experience and he's helped realign our organization to make sure we have the right resources to deliver on this program."

When asked about the potential impact of the escalating row between U.S. and China over Washington's arms sales to Taiwan on Boeing sales to the mainland, Tinseth declined to speculate.

"That is a government-to-government issue. It will be inappropriate for me to address it," he said. "And if you think about it I think it's far too premature to understand what the impact of that issue might be for our industry or specifically for us at Boeing."

Tinseth, who is in Singapore attending the Singapore Airshow, also told reporters on the sidelines that he it expects new orders for commercial aircraft this year to fall short of deliveries and sees no increase in demand until 2012.

On the bankruptcy of Japan Airlines, Tinseth said Boeing has not received any cancellations of the 70-odd Boeings JAL has on order. JAL, which filed for bankruptcy protection last month as part of state-led restructuring, plans to retire all of its 37 Boeing 747-400 jumbo jets and all 16 McDonnell Douglas MD-90 planes and buy smaller aircraft to take their place.

Boeing has sold over 5,000 next-generation 737 models since production began 12 years ago, of which about 3,000 have been delivered. The first 737s were built in the late 1960s.

Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 family models are the workhorses used on many short-haul routes.

-- Reuters contributed to this report.