Boeing May Start Building New 777 as Asia Rebounds

Boeing Co., the world’s largest aircraft maker, may win enough orders for its proposed longer-range 777 to start production within six months, Chairman and Chief Executive Philip Condit said.

Demand for aircraft in East Asia, stunted by a two-year economic slump, is bouncing back faster than Boeing expected. That may enable it to introduce the 777-200x, a plane designed to fly 18 hours nonstop on routes such as Los Angeles to Singapore.

“That’s a market that is developing right now,” Condit said in an interview in Singapore last week between meetings with Singapore Airlines executives. “As Asia begins to recover, the demand for very-long-range airplanes becomes much more real, and I think that clearly helps the launch process.”

Hopes for a longer-range version of the 4-year-old 777 underscore the importance of Asia’s economic recovery as more people begin to travel again for business and pleasure. Singapore Airlines’ load factor, a measure of how efficiently it uses its passenger and cargo capacity, rose to 70% in the first seven months of 1999 from 67% a year earlier.

That kind of recovery, evidence of economic expansion in East Asia, is moving Seattle-based Boeing to take a second look at its delivery schedule for the next two years.

The recovery “will mean that 2001, from a delivery standpoint, will be much better and probably even up, where before we were worried it might be a bit down” from 2000, Condit said.

The new models Boeing is pushing, together dubbed the 777x, would be longer-range derivatives of its 777-200 and 777-300 models.