Emirates Attempts To Reshuffle Boeing Orders

The delays for the 777x program could be even more damaging than those of the MAX (if the max is to get flying again I think it will sell on the range and strong fuel economics).

The 777x already has a small niche market of the Gulf and flag carriers, and with even national airlines focusing more and more on point to point, investing in the 797 or a revived 757-Neo to compete with the great selling a321LR would make more sense for Boeing. The market for very large, passenger wide bodies seems to be declining every year.

This is fascinating. The 777x is set to be an amazing aircraft, but one that no airline needs for a few years. I could definitely see a situation in which Boeing delays it’s introduction until the mid 2020s when demand recovers, in return perhaps for multiple airlines increasing 787 orders which they have plenty of capacity for. The question is whether they can slow 777-300er production enough to keep the line functional for a few more years. A delay of a few years could ultimately increase demand for the 777x in the long term as the older 777Ws will be ageing out of many fleets by 2024 or 2025.

Since the 777x was intended to be the flagship aircraft for many of these airlines, as you have pointed out before Lucky, this could halt the introduction of new first and biz hard products.

So what happens?

The 777x is going to be too"early" for its time like the A380?
Or too "late" for the needs of the airlines?
The programm being ended in 15 years?

What seats can we expect they’ll equip their 787s with?

to be frank, i am really sorry to say this, the 777X was perfectly timed with the rise in air travel and then, someone had to play Plague Inc. on the Area 51 computers.

Buuuut...This should hopefully cope up with the massive spike in travel demand in 2023-24. QR and EK can handle the costs of affording these planes (but now that these governments are burning money like there's no tomorrow, with deficits on a massive rise), it could get to a point where QR and EK could be the next Etihad. No doubt on Lufthansa, they just have to burn through the money of the German taxpayers, and cheers to LH for getting the 5* recognition 8 years before launching the product.

heck, Global Ghana could launch a new business class product called GSuites (oh snap, Google owns it), or GBiz which could be the -new Business Class product- along with $150 million dollars and they could get the 5* rating hehe

@Ben - It may be worth mentioning that the "recovery" of long haul flying that IATA is predicting/guessing by 2024 is to reach or break all time record numbers. If a new all time record is required just to hit the recovery point, they're using some pretty skewed metrics.

Hi Ben or someone else, can you explain what Ben meant by "787-9s have better seat capacity"? Isn't the 777-8 larger than 787-9?