BY MOHAMMAD SHOEB
DOHA: Problems encountered by Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner are glitches that any new airplane goes through, and the company is confident about its performance as no airline has cancelled any orders, a senior official of Boeing said here on Thursday.
Boeing Middle East President Jeffrey Johnson (pictured) said: “Any new aeroplane has had a few challenges to get through, and 787 is no exception. We are confident about the technology and performance of the plane, and in future it will set standards for the industry.”
He added that 787s enjoy popularity among airline operators due to its “cutting-edge technology, fuel efficiency and other competitive advantages”.
Since the launch of 787, Boeing has delivered more than 50 Dreamliners to several airlines including Qatar Airways, but all were grounded for months after some of the 787 airplanes caught fire due to problems in batteries.
The world’s leading aircraft manufacturer has 126 orders for the plane from the Middle East, including 30 from Qatar Airways. Out of these confirmed orders only six Dreamliners have been delivered to QA, and the rest are due to be fulfilled over the next few years, but no company has cancelled any orders despite the Dreamliner grabbing headlines for wrong reasons, that too so frequently.
“We haven’t had any order cancellation from any operators. I think customers like Qatar Airways are still very happy with the fleet. And we are also discussing with our customers to address any issues that they have,” said Johnson.
He added: “We are pretty good about the performance. It is 20 percent more fuel efficient, and has many distinguished technological features apart from the 70 percent bigger windows providing much better views. All these features make it a special aeroplane.”
QA is one of the biggest customers of Boeing in the region. It already has a big fleet of Boeing planes, in addition to 41 “unfulfilled orders” (24 Dreamliners and 17 of 777s) to be delivered over the next three years, including nine new orders for 777s which were confirmed at the Paris Air Show.
Boeing sees Qatar as an important market, so it opened its Doha office in 2010. Since then the company has been striving to deepen its foothold in Qatar. He hinted that the company has plans to diversify its business portfolio by cooperating with the government.
“We are also looking forward to be a partner to become more valuable to the government too. We already do quite a bit of maintenance services for the Qatari Emiri Air Force,” said Johnson.
In March, Boeing signed a two-year agreement with Qatar Computing Research Institute for a joint project called ‘Data Analytics Research’ to examine ways to better recognise patterns, correlations and anomalies in massive amounts of data produced by aerospace systems.
“The Dreamliner is going to set standards for aeroplanes in health management system. The data linked to Boeing’s operation centres will help take decisions in real time… Once the little quarks are worked out, Dreamliner will provide an awesome performance.”
The Peninsula
