British Airways Orders $6.4 Billion of Boeing 747-400s

In what it said was its largest investment in new aircraft, British Airways on Friday ordered 33 Boeing 747-400s worth $6.4 billion.

The order included 21 firm orders worth $3.85 billion for Boeing’s biggest and newest airliner and 12 options valued at $2.56 billion.

British Airways said it is possible that--during the delivery period of the new planes--Boeing might produce a larger version of the 747. To prepare for that, the airline said it has negotiated the right to convert any number of the planes ordered to the new model.

Some of the 21 firm orders announced Friday, a Boeing spokesman said, were conversions of options that British Airways had taken out previously. The British carrier’s order continued Boeing’s remarkable sales success of recent years.

Earlier this year, the Seattle-based manufacturer received major orders from Korean Airlines, which ordered 23 747-400s, and from Japan Air Lines, which placed 20 firm orders and took options for an additional 34 of the four-engine, wide-body jets.

British Airways said its order includes $990 million for about 160 Rolls-Royce engines for the planes, plus spare parts. Other British manufacturers will supply components worth about $123 million, the airline said.

Deliveries of the new planes to British Airways, which serves 164 destinations in 75 countries and says it flies more international passengers than any other airline, will begin in 1992 and will be completed in 1999.

“This order will ensure that we have a sufficient flow of 747-400 aircraft to meet the growth of our intercontinental network, forecast for the 1990s and beyond,” John King, chairman of the airline, said.

The 21 firm orders will bring the British Airways’ fleet of 747-400s to 42 by 1999. The airline put its first 747-400 into service last July and now operates 13, the most of any airline.

By the end of the decade, British Airways said, its new 747-400s and the 747-200s it already has will make up a fleet of 80 airliners in the 747 class.

The British Airways 747-400s carry 18 passengers in first class, 74 in club (business) class and 294 in economy. They can carry 16 tons of cargo and have a nonstop range of about 8,000 miles.

Helane Becker, an airline analyst with the New York brokerage of Shearson Lehman Hutton, said British Airways “is one of the best positioned of the European international airlines for growth in the 1990s.”

She noted that it is the dominant airline at two of the world’s largest airports, London’s Heathrow and Gatwick, and is the only foreign airline to have its own terminal at New York’s Kennedy International Airport.

By this summer, it will have some 225 aircraft in operation ranging from the supersonic Concorde to small island-hopping aircraft.

Boeing says it is turning out five 747-400s a month and that 77 have been delivered so far. The manufacturer said it has a backlog of 260 orders for the plane.

Boeing has a total backlog of 1,773 planes of all types, with sales prices totaling about $90 billion. The company has received firm orders for 240 aircraft worth $25.3 billion so far this year.