‘Big Ticket’ Orders Climb 8.8%; Best Gain in 3 1/2 Yrs.

Orders for “big ticket” durable goods, propelled by a big jump in aircraft orders, increased 8.8% in June, the largest advance in 42 months, the government reported today.

The Commerce Department said orders totaled $125.23 billion last month, an increase of $10.14 billion over the May figure.

Virtually all the gain reflected a big jump in orders for aircraft. The transportation category shot up 35.5% to $38.24 billion last month.

Without this gain, total orders would have risen only 0.1%, the government said.

The big increase in total orders had been expected because of announcements by Seattle-based Boeing Co. of a string of giant orders for commercial aircraft in recent weeks.

Those orders have totaled $8 billion. But the report said demand for commercial aircraft rose about $3 billion, indicating that the rest of the Boeing orders will show up in coming months.

The overall increase of 8.8% was the largest single-month gain since an 8.9% increase in December, 1985, also a month when the orders report was propelled by a big jump in the transportation category.

While there have been concerns that high factory operating rates would contribute to inflationary pressures, economists said they were not too alarmed by the big jump in manufacturing orders in June since it was contained in one industry.

The 0.1% rise in demand excluding the transportation category was slightly below expectations.

The overall increase of 8.8% followed a 1.9% drop in May that had been the biggest setback since last August.