With a direct journey from Moses Lake (MWH) to Singapore (SIN), Boeing brought its new large aircraft, the Boeing 777-9X, to the Singapore Airshow. The hope of the North American manufacturer is to be able to boost sales of its new widebody, which has not had a large sales volume.
One of Boeing's bets to attract the eyes of executives are the impressive aerial demonstrations that are already taking place as a way of showing what the plane is capable of. Click here And check it out.
With a clear objective, Boeing despite the setbacks regarding the project received 'good news' in these last few days from its test team. With journalists on board the test aircraft, executives and engineers also took the opportunity to update on the progress of the 777X project.
Brian Hermesmeyer who is Senior Director of Product Marketing said the four test aircraft performed around 650 flights with 1.900 hours flown in all. The figure also includes the journey of just over 16 hours from the US to Singapore.
“We had fifty people on board and still had plenty of fuel,” reinforces Brian.
The chief test pilot who also participated in the initial Boeing 777 program in the 90s, Van Chaney, showed confidence and enthusiasm for the new project.
“It's been a really, really good show so far. The engines were wonderful and the systems were good – we usually spend a lot of time on the systems.” Said the pilot.
Van Chaney also said that engineers were expecting to encounter problems with the 777X's folding wings but that so far the feature that allows the new plane to have the same wingspan as its predecessor has not presented any problems and has been "pretty good".
In view of the positive comments from its teams, the Boeing now he has little more hope and confidence in the project and reinforced that he is working hard so that the first plane is delivered by the end of 2023.
The American manufacturer is aware that the sector's recovery will influence the decision of airlines to invest in a new and large aircraft, especially in Asia-Pacific, which has firm orders from All Nippon Airways (ANA), Cathay Pacific and Singapore Airlines.
Orders from the three companies together represent 72 aircraft out of 258 orders for the 777-9X variant. To date, the smaller 777-8X variant has received only 56 firm orders.
