Boeing aims to firm up 737MAX orders this year

Boeing Co aims to convert all the commitments on its single-aisle 737MAX aircraft into firm orders this year and secure some more orders, the head of its commercial airplanes business said. Jim Albaugh, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said this year the company would focus on delivering the massive orderbooks as well as coming up with a strategy for its long-haul twin-aisle aircraft. Boeing started a year later than its European rival Airbus in a race to overhaul the $2 trillion narrowbody aircraft market, and is fighting hard to restore balance to their tense duopoly. “We have over 1,100 commitments and our goal this year is to turn all of those into firm orders,” Albaugh told reporters on Wednesday during his short trip to the city-state. His visit came a few days after the Singapore Airshow. “We hope we are going to have something approaching a couple thousand of airplanes before we launched the first one,” he said referring to the number of firm 737MAX orders that the company would like to have before its first delivery in 2017. Both Airbus and Boeing have secured around $40 billion worth of single-aisle aircraft orders in recent months from Southeast Asian budget carriers, raising industry concerns about overcapacity.