From the Aviation Week website, dated April 4th from Dallas.
American Airlines CEO Donald Carty strongly endorsed Boeing's effort to develop a new high-speed, subsonic aircraft today, saying such an airliner could revolutionize scheduling and possibly the industry.
Speaking at Aviation Week's MRO Conference & Exhibition, which opened here this morning, Carty praised the concept as the next great way for airlines to gain significant productivity improvements. "Over the past several years, we've had to work hard to make gains in productivity and save costs," he said. "But there have been no such productivity enhancements in the flying part of the industry in 40 years," since turbofan transports became common in the fleet. "Twenty percent faster is 20% gain in productivity, and the whole scheduling equation changes."
Such an aircraft would be a strong competitor to Airbus' A380, Carty said. "I had a conversation with an executive from Qantas and asked him why he committed to the A380, and he told me that there are really only three time windows per day where you can fly from Los Angeles to Sydney and depart at a reasonable hour Los Angeles time and arrive at a reasonable hour Sydney time. You can't increase frequency, so you have to increase aircraft size.
"But if you change the speed of the aircraft, that would change that equation altogether." Such a change could be especially attractive to the high-end business traveler, Carty noted.
American is watching to see if Boeing can fulfill its promise to keep the economics of the aircraft similar to the 767 that it would replace. "We don't say we need to be able to buy the plane for what we paid for a 767 five years ago. We do say that we'd like to pay what we'd pay for a 767 tomorrow with all the technological upgrades it's had since then."
He advised that Boeing Airplanes President Allan Mulally bring other airlines into design talks, providing, he joked, that "he make clear that American gets the first three years of production."
This is good sign for the new Boeing.
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Safe flying to you...