Randy's Journal: Archives

03 August 2005

Plane truth

A pretty good article this week in the King County Journal, a Seattle-area newspaper, points out that orders in 2005 for 737s alone are already far more than Boeing received in total orders of all airplane models in all of last year.

It's about all you need to know to understand that the Renton, Washington assembled 737 is going to be sticking around for a while. This airplane is the world's best-seller. Maybe you saw Air Transport World's recent ranking of the most profitable low-cost carriers in the world. The top four fly 737s exclusively. The top two - Southwest Airlines and Ryanair - had a combined operating profit of nearly $1 billion last year!

I'm telling you all this by way of prefacing the fact that there's been a lot of speculation - some of it coming from our competition - that a replacement single-aisle Boeing airplane is just around the corner. Don't believe it.

I plan to take up this subject in further detail in a later blog entry. But suffice it to say, the truth is that new 737s will be taking off from Renton for some time to come.