Amid the doom and gloom of an industry haemorrhaging at the hands of a worsening global economic crisis, launch customer Air France took delivery of the first of Boeing’s new 777 freighter this week.
“I think it’s very important that we could get and could operate a more efficient product in light of the “crisis” facing the airline industry,” said Pierre Vellay, executive vice president for new aircraft for Air France.
Air France, along with a handful of other airlines, played an active role in the creation of the 777 Freighter, Vellay said during a delivery ceremony held outside Seattle. The airline has five 777 freighters on order but looks set to delay delivery of at least two, even after its first was delayed by a few months as a result of the Boeing machinists strike last year.
It’s an industry that is in a “major crisis,” Vellay, Air France’s executive vice president of fleet planning, said at the delivery event. He disclosed to reporters that Air France is in talks with Boeing to delay delivery of two of the five 777 freighters it has on order, along with a few of the 17 remaining 777-300ER passenger planes it has ordered.
Vellay also said Air France may delay delivery of “one or two” of the dozen Airbus A380s it has on order. Th e A380 is the world’s largest passenger plane.
But Air France-KLM, the biggest airline in Europe, remains bullish on one next week.
Tom Crabtree, regional director of cargo marketing and revenue analysis for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said November and December may have been the worst period ever for air cargo since the Jet Age began. He described the current climate as “dire.”
But he also said none of the dozen customers that have placed orders for 73 of the 777 freighters has backed out. FedEx, which has fi rm orders for 15, has said it will order another 15. But FedEx is pushing back some deliveries. Boeing has more than 70 orders for its latest freighter.
“This plane has no real competition,” Crabtree said, and will cut the per-mile cargo unit costs by about 40 per cent. he added.
Airbus has delayed development of a freighter version of its A380. Boeing, meanwhile, has another large freighter in development, the 747-8.
Despite some design changes that have delayed it and increased costs, Boeing says the 747-8 will be ready by mid-2010, although lack of interest in the passenger variant may scuttle the freighter version.
