Boeing Ends Airliner Order Drought as Korean Air Commits to Buy Dreamliners

   By Robert Wall and Andrew Tangel 
 

LE BOURGET, France--Boeing Co. (BA) on Tuesday secured a commitment from Korean Air to buy 787 Dreamliners, putting behind it a two-month airliner-order drought in the wake of the grounding of its 737 MAX fleet.

Boeing entered the Paris Air Show with a negative 125 net orders for this year, reflecting light new bookings and a raft of cancellations, including from India's financially struggling Jet Airways (India) Ltd (532617.BY). It hadn't any new orders in April or May.

The biennial Paris Air Show is typically a place for plane makers to showcase new products and rack up large airliner orders. But this year Boeing has had to balance that with handling the aftermath of the two 737 MAX crashes in October and March that killed a total of 346 people and have idled the fleet world-wide as it works on a fix.

Boeing said Korean Air would introduce 20 of the largest version of the Dreamliner, the 787-10, and 10 more slightly smaller 787-9s. The deal has a value of $6.3 billion before industry-standard discounts. Some of the planes are being acquired by plane-rental firm Air Lease Corp. (AL) and placed with the Asian carrier.

Rival Airbus SE (AIR.FR) on Tuesday also continued its order haul, including for its newly launched A321XLR introduced at the Paris Air Show on Monday.

Philippine budget carrier Cebu Pacific on Tuesday said it ordered 10 of the new planes, with first delivery in 2024, along with 16 A330-900 widebody and five A320neo single-aisle jets.

Saudi Arabian Airlines added to an earlier A320neo deal, taking as many as 100 of the planes, including 15 A321XLR, Airbus said.

Write to Robert Wall at [e-mail] and Andrew Tangel at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 18, 2019 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT)

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