Less maintenance means more revenue for new jet's buyers

Boeing's new 787 will require dramatically less out-of-service maintenance than previous jets, a company executive said Thursday at a briefing in the new Boeing customer center in Renton.

Airlines will have to take the plane out of service for maintenance only once every 12 years, allowing them to reap substantially more revenue, said Bob Avery, vice president of services and support on the 787 program.

A current 767, by comparison, has to be taken into the mechanic's shop for five to 10 days every 18 months for a maintenance check, and for three weeks every six years for a major structural check.

Avery said Boeing has designed the 787 so that the lower-level checks can be done in stages overnight, without interrupting the plane's flight schedule. And major structural checks will be needed only once in a dozen years because the carbon fiber composite airframe will not corrode.

Avery also announced a new, all-inclusive support package for the 787, called GoldCare, that he said could further reduce an airline's support costs. With this option, Boeing will become the one-stop middleman between an airline and suppliers of both spare parts and maintenance.

"We manage it, we integrate it and we guarantee it," Avery said.

He said GoldCare will work out to be cheaper for many airlines than handling the support themselves. Pricing will vary according to the airplane usage pattern. Six airlines have so far expressed serious interest, he said.

Boeing also announced that it has pushed out the required interval between mandatory maintenance checks on the 777 jet from two years to three, a shift that it estimates will add $100,000 in annual value to a 777 in operation.

Jack Trunnell, Boeing's director of maintenance support engineering, said this will further increase the 777's current competitive advantage over the Airbus A340.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com