Lufthansa plans big order for newest 747, sources say

Seattle Times ^ | 12/05/2006 | Bloomberg News Staff

[Paul Ross]

Lufthansa plans to buy about 20 Boeing 747-8 planes worth $5 billion at list prices, a setback to Airbus, people familiar with the order said.

...

The 747-8 will be built using the more-efficient engines and wing design from Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, and the plane will cost 21 percent less to operate than Airbus's A380, according to Boeing's Web site.

[wolf78]

Lufthansa is obviously hedging their bets...perhaps even ready to drop the A-380 altogether if they find it in their interests to do so...

Lufthansa has no interest in dropping the A-380 altogether, they're just smart buyers. They signed up for in October or November 2001, when no other airline on earth would even remotely consider buying aircraft and probably got a 50-60% discount.

Now Boeing desperately needed a viable launch customer (not the "Primaris" type) for the pax version of their 747-8. Lufthansa was happy to take some, for a bit more than a 100 million a pop ;-).

The art of business: Screwing the other guy and having him like it.

[Paul Ross]

The recently fired Ex-CEO of Airbust had said at the begining of this year that he could guarantee that Boeing would not recieve a single order for the passenger version of the new 747 this year.

LOL! What a joker... $19 billions in orders for this new variant so far...and their backlog is past 2010 now...

[Proud_USA_Republican]

And thats just one airline order. I'm not sure how many of the new 747 passenger planes they will be producing per year, but I'm sure the Lufthansa order won't be 20 planes delivered all in one year.

This means there are plenty of open slots avialable for other airlines in the first year of production. The orders will be coming.

I find it soo ironic that lufthansa, one of the biggest users of Airbust and always under intense political pressure to buy their planes has become the first official buyer of the new 747. It truely shows how bad things are at Airbust. I wonder if they will be designated the official launch customer for this plane. Man, talk about a blow to europride.