With sales flying high, Boeing can relax, enjoy show

The 2006 Farnborough Air Show for Airbus is fraught with expectation, but for Boeing the event will be much less tense.

Riding the current market success of their jets, the leaders of Boeing's commercial-airplane division need only provide calm assurance that, despite media skepticism and some worrisome recent miscues, they can deliver the 787 on time and avoid the pitfalls that have snared Airbus.

The star of the daily flying shows at Farnborough will be the giant Airbus A380 double-decker.

Rather than be upstaged on the commercial front, Boeing will leave the flyovers to its military division, which will dazzle with the F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter; the Apache Longbow helicopter; and the V-22 Osprey that takes off like a helicopter, then swings its twin rotors 90 degrees and flies like an airplane.

In a nearby facility run by the now-privatized, former British defense-research organization QinetiQ, a model of the new jumbo-jet derivative, the 747-8, is undergoing its latest wind-tunnel tests.

The Boeing Commercial Airplanes pavilion will include mock-ups of the interiors of both the 747-8 and the 787.

Less pressure

Because each of those new jets has some way to go before becoming a real airplane, Boeing doesn't face the hard production questions that confront Airbus.

In interviews before the show, Boeing executives refrained from gloating at Airbus' A380 troubles, caused by wiring-system delays.

Mike Bair, head of the 787 program, remembered Boeing's bad last-minute wiring problems on the 747-400 in the early 1990s, and recalled wire bundles "strewn across the runway."

"It's tough. There's a reason there's only two of us doing this," said Bair. "I have a fair amount of empathy for what they are going through."

As for Boeing's new planes, Bair and other executives conceded the challenges and spoke openly of some setbacks, but insisted everything remains on schedule. The 787 is scheduled to enter service in 2008.

Last month, Boeing admitted that one of the prototype 787 fuselage barrels it had built in Seattle had to be scrapped because of defects in the plastic.

In addition, the first of the super-sized cargo freighters that will ferry parts of the 787 around the globe — a modified 747 with a bulging upper fuselage built in Taiwan — will arrive in Seattle in August, a month later than planned.

"The swing tail gave them more challenges than expected," said 787 spokeswoman Yvonne Leach.

A nastier surprise last month startled analysts and shook confidence in Boeing's ability to deliver complex systems.

Long delays

The defense division disclosed a two-year delay in delivery of surveillance airplanes to Australia and Turkey because integration of the radar systems proved more complex than expected.

But 787 executives remain steadfast.

In an interview, Mike Sinnett, head of the 787 systems team, said getting diverse airplane systems from different suppliers to talk to one another on the network has been challenging.

The 787 will be the first large commercial jet with its systems digitally defined in a single master data set. Creating that single data source has been a huge challenge for his team of dedicated software analysts.

"We're inventing the process and the tools just ahead of inventing the airplane," Sinnett said. But the benefit has been Boeing can regularly audit the systems and "work a lot of the bugs out ahead of time," reducing the potential problems ahead, he said.

Meanwhile, many things have gone surprisingly well. Engine development, flight-control testing, ice-protection systems all have shown unexpectedly smooth progress.

Sinnett had feared an innovative system that uses electric generators both to start the engines and to provide power in flight might prove problematic. Not so.

"It just works," Sinnett said. "That's cool."

He said the systems schedule has slipped a little from the original plan, but that all systems will still be ready before the 787's first flight a year from now. On all previous programs, Sinnett said, that milestone was achieved only during flight testing.

So despite the challenges, the 787 update Bair delivers at the show Tuesday will be upbeat.

Orders may be sparse

Though Boeing plays down order possibilities in advance, some deals are near fruition and could be announced at the show.

Industry sources indicate Futura, the Spanish charter airline founded by Irish flag carrier Aer Lingus, is close to a deal to lease 737-900ERs, and SpiceJet of India may order the same model. The first airline order for the passenger version of the 747-8 is also possible. Lufthansa could be ready to order a large number of the planes to replace their aging 747-400s.

Qatar is likely to firm up its order for 20 777s, first announced a year ago at the Paris Air Show.

At all the recent annual air shows, Airbus supersalesman John Leahy has ended up topping Boeing's order tally. With the number of big sales campaigns diminishing, that'll be harder this year.

"We've had so many orders the last couple of years," cautioned Airbus North America CEO Barry Eccleston.

"It's getting very difficult to continue to pull those rabbits out of the hat."

But Boeing, outselling Airbus by a 4-1 ratio so far this year, doesn't need many orders for a successful show.

Boeing's strategic path is clear. The major tests lie ahead. Farnborough provides a comfortable milestone to chart the journey.

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