New Boeing A Few Years Away

Boeing CEO David Calhoun says it will be at least a couple of years before the company starts working on any new aircraft. He also warned the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference that it will likely be at least 10 years before a clean-sheet design is on the market. The company has been musing about a new single-aisle replacement for the 757 that fills the gap between the 737 and widebodies, but Calhoun said such a project will have to wait for technology to make the next generation better enough to justify the investment. “The incremental performance is narrow enough that you’re not going to bet an airplane on that,” he said.

In the meantime, the company is concentrating on how it builds aircraft, and that includes beefing up the digital environment in which the design and construction details are housed. “It takes a lot of learning, the number of tests you can run virtually on the design and performance the airplane, the manufacturability and service. But we have to develop and mature the tools,” he said.