FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1977
1977 - 0077.PDF
71 The 727 keeps selling BILL SWEETMAN reports from Seattle 1976 will be remembered as the year when the industrial politics of the aerospace industry revolved around the 200-seater, short/medium-range airliner. The 7X7, DC-X-200 or A300B10 (or even the A300B2/B4) were cross bred on paper in every conceivable permutation. The 200- seater, after all, was the natural heir-apparent to the Boeing 727, with a US-centred market opening up in 1980- 81 and absorbing 1,400 aircraft by the end of the decade. After a slow first quarter Boeing sales reports made it very clear that the 727 was in no mood to die quietly and that discussions concerning division of the legacy were more than a little premature. As if the announcement of 108 orders between January 1 and the end of October was not enough proof that the 727 was very much alive, Boeing could point out that 91 of those orders were placed by eight of the US domestic trunk carriers. As 1976 drew to a close Delta Air Lines ordered an unannounced number of 727s to supplement the 21 it had purchased earlier in the year, and Braniff was negotiating for five more to add to the six it had bought. Most of the US trunks will now be taking delivery of new 727s well into 1978. Two factors contributed to the success of the 727 in 1976. First was the resurgence of traffic on US domestic routes. The trunk airlines found that they could not handle the increased passenger flows merely by increasing seating densities, but the financial outlook was not good enough to justify launch of a new type. In any case a new aircraft could not be ready in time. Airlines like American and United also had a short-term problem in the shape of large fleets of pure-jet "gas hogs" which could not be retired in the face of rising traffic figures without some replacement being found. Additions to the 727 fleet could be very closely and accurately costed and were an invest ment even a banker could understand, appealing to the very finance-conscious US airline industry. Outside the US the second boost stage on 727 sales cut in. Over the past year Boeing has used the 727 as the spearhead of its attack on the Airbus A300, following the painful defeats of summer 1975. ("We knew we were get ting somewhere," commented one Airbus salesman, "when Boeing started putting us third instead of second in their comparative brochures.") The 727 has maintained the Boeing stranglehold (broken only by Lockheed in recent years) on the Middle East market. It has kept Singapore Airlines in the Boeing fold after a contest that dragged on for more than two years despite an all-out Boeing effort; "a few of us stayed in Seattle," is a typical Boeing com ment. Even Alitalia chose the 727, although the airline had no strong Boeing tradition and the A300 was already in service within the Atlas group to which it belongs. "Our competition is the wide-body type aeroplane," says 727 marketing director Mark Gregoire, "and we are answer ing a service-orientated market with frequency." The Singa pore Airlines battle, he says, was a typical "size versus frequency" contest. The mere fact that the 727 is smaller than the A300, Boeing contends, should enable the operator to compete more effectively and earn more revenue in a given market, even though his seat-mile cost will be higher. Boeing points out that Indian Airlines and South African Airways operate domestic services in virtual monopoly markets, where reduction of frequency is not so important; on the other hand there are markets in many parts of the world where frequency is already adequate and the equa tion is a difficult one. The length and bitterness of the sales contests in which the 727 and A300 have been engaged Heading, Delta Air Lines was one of the US domestic airlines wh ich ordered more 727s in 1976. Relow left, the multi-chute ejector nozzle is one possible way of reducing 727 noise. Also in prospect, below righ t, is a convertible passenger/freight version
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
