South Korean flag carrier Korean Air said yesterday it has signed a US$1.3 billion deal with US aerospace giant Boeing for 10 of its new generation B787 Dreamliners to upgrade its fleet.
The deal includes options for 10 additional B787s although Korean Air said it would consider buying more planes only if business prospects were good.
Korean Air said deliveries are scheduled from 2009 through 2011. The company now operates 115 aircraft including 85 Boeings and 29 Airbuses.
"The airline selected the 787s as part of its strategic plan to meet future demand for point to point travel on long-range destinations and to improve aircraft cost efficiencies," it said in a statement.
The deal is part of Korean Air's US$10 billion investment program to renew its fleet. It will include the purchase of up to eight super-jumbo A380 aircraft from Airbus, Boeing's arch-rival, with delivery scheduled to begin from 2007.
"This airplane deal signifies our commitment to our vision of becoming one of the world's top 10 airlines by 2010," Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho said in a statement.
"It exemplifies our long-range planning to ensure Korean Air's capability to meet future competition and market demand while also being more cost efficient," he said.
Korean Air said the purchase of B787s would reduce its costs by 10 percent.
"The options are not obligatory. We will consider buying additional B787s only if business prospects are good," a Korean Air official said.
Boeing said it has received 203 orders and commitments from 17 customers for the B787 since launching the jetliner less than a year ago.
"Korean Air's selection of the 787 continues the steady drumbeat of orders for this remarkable new airplane," Larry Dickenson, Boeing's vice president for sales, said in a statement.
Korean Air is the world's third-largest air cargo carrier and the 15th largest in terms of passenger numbers.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS