O’Keefe fate unknown; assessing impact on tanker competition

The fate of Sean O’Keefe, CEO of EADS North America, who was among those on the de Havilland DHC-3 Otter than crashed and killed five of the nine people on board, remains unknown. Former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens,… Read More

Boeing’s Albaugh talks about 737 future

Here is another segment of our interview with Jim Albaugh, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, during the Farnborough Air Show. In this post, we report Albaugh’s thoughts on boosting the 737 rate to 40 per month and the… Read More

Buying Russian for US lift

We have, from time-to-time, joked that the USAF ought to buy a Russian aerial tanker as a way to avoid the Boeing-EADS-Northrop-Airbus rhubarb in the long-running KC-X saga. Well, here’s news that the US Navy is planning to… Read More

Tanker award to slip to 2011?

Update, Aug. 6: Here is a Pentagon spokesman reacting to the US Aerospace protest over being rejected for its KC-X bid because it missed the filing deadline by five minutes, as reported by The Dayton Business Journal: In… Read More

Boeing considers 40/mo for 737 rate; Airbus ups A320 to 40

Update, July 30: Airbus announced today it will increase the production rate on its A320 family to 40 per month. Original Post: Boeing is considering going to a production rate of 40 737s per month, with a decision… Read More

Boeing wide-open on 777 future: Albaugh

Update, Aug. 1: Dominic Gates  of The Seattle Times has a long article with the views on the 777 successor from Tim Clark, CEO of Emirates Airlines–which operates more 777s than any other airlines. Original Post: Boeing has… Read More

Farnborough/Wednesday

Note: We have updated the Tuesday posting at the end of that column. Update, 8:00 PM BST: Day 3 orders are now included toward the end of this post. Another day, another set of aircraft orders are expected…. Read More

Tanker face off at Farnborough

Boeing and EADS held tanker briefings this week–Monday for Boeing, Tuesday for EADS. Boeing offered up top program officials while EADS offered up two American crewmen from its test flight program, a pilot and a boom operator. Boeing’s… Read More

Farnborough/Sunday-EADS

We’re at the Farnborough Air Show and on Saturday attended the day-long EADS media briefings. We filed reports exclusively for KIRO TV (CBS) in Seattle. These stories are: Airbus predicts 130+ orders at the air show; Leahy says… Read More

French union understands “Buy American” on tanker

Update, July 19: Airbus says CGT is fourth Union out of five for Airbus in France, representing about 10 percent of Airbus employees in France. Update, July 16: We received this from CGT:  the union severed ties in 1978.Christian and… Read More