Soaring oil prices are likely to crimp the need for regional jets and force bigger aircraft to grow more fuel-efficient, a senior Boeing executive said yesterday.
Randy Tinseth, Boeing Co marketing vice president, said oil prices are likely to remain high and won’t stabilize for some time.
As a result, the market for regional jets seating 50 passengers is disappearing and being replaced by demand for aircraft seating more people, he said at Boeing’s Tokyo office.
PHOTO: AP
Tinseth said Boeing’s planned 747-8, which seats 467 and is set for first delivery late next year, is among the more attractive larger jets available because of its fuel efficiency against comparable aircraft.
Rival Airbus’ A380-800 seats 555 people. It has been in service since late last year.
Tinseth said fuel efficiency will be key.
“We are very fortunate that across the board we are the world’s most efficient aircraft,” he told reporters. “So we’re well positioned.”
Oil prices have surged this year, and travelers are paying for the costs through fuel surcharges. That has intensified competition among airlines and heightened the need for cost reductions.
Light, sweet crude for September delivery was trading at around US$122.22 a barrel yesterday in Asia, down from a record of US$147 earlier in the month, but still up about 60 percent from a year ago.
Tinseth said oil prices may settle after many years but will continue to be relatively high at about US$70 or US$80 a barrel.
The need for giant jets like the 747-8 and A380 is expected to be relatively small, comprising about 3 percent of the industry’s 29,400 new airplanes being delivered in the next 20 years, he said.
Much of that need, or nearly half of the “big airplane market,” will come from Asia, where the need to fly to North America and Europe from congested cities like Tokyo will continue to be great, he said.
Boeing said it has received a better-than-expected 105 orders for the passenger and cargo models of the 747-8, with four additional commitments.
Boeing’s smaller 787, which has been touted as more fuel efficient, has been hampered by lengthy production delays because of supply chain glitches. The jet is more than a year behind the original schedule.
Boeing Japan president Nicole Piasecki said the problems with the 787 were being worked out, and that the first flight is scheduled for sometime in the fourth quarter of this year, and the first delivery in the third quarter of next year.
“We’re back on track now,” she said at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.
She said glitches behind the delays came because the plane was breaking a lot of new ground, including developing new material to replace the usual aluminum for jets.
The 787 has the highest ratio of Japanese supplier participation in designing and manufacturing of any Boeing jet.
Piasecki said the decision to involve Japanese in important decisions was not to blame for the delays.
“Boeing should be held accountable for that and nobody else,” she said.
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