Boeing to buy some A340s

Believe it or not, Boeing has agreed to purchase a handful of Airbus A340-600 aircraft. Even more surprising? This actually isn’t a particularly uncommon move in general, though it is less common in the aviation world. The story comes out of China, where China Eastern has indicated that they are going to purchase 20 Boeing 777 aircraft. At the same time, Boeing will purchase five A346s that China Eastern is currently operating, allowing the carrier to shift their operations to the Boeing aircraft.

So, is this really all that shocking? Actually not. It isn’t particularly uncommon for one vendor to buy out the legacy equipment of another vendor to close a deal. I used to be involved in such negotiations on a somewhat frequent basis. Whether the legacy gear is scrapped or re-sold varies from vendor to vendor and industry to industry, but the general premise is pretty sound.

So, yes, the headline makes for very entertaining reading, but the actual news behind it isn’t all that crazy.

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9 Comments

“I used to be involved in such negotiations on a somewhat frequent basis. ”

That’s a story to tell..

It really isn’t that interesting a story as it was in a different industry. Watching Cisco negotiate to buy Nortel gear was actually pretty boring, for example, but it happened all the time.

Is there, in fact, any way to make a sentence contains “Cisco” and “Nortel” _not_ boring? I can’t think of one. . .

Of course you can make a sentence containing Nortel and Cisco not boring. They power the world in many ways, or did, and that is not boring at all 🙂

Considering it has only happened 3 or 4 times in 30 years among aircraft builders, its rare for the industry.

Also the other 5 China Easterns are being traded back to Airbus against 5 new A330’s, so we’ll see a split fleet for a while.

Hmm, Boeing has figured out that you get more sales by being proactive. Good ploy to ensure client loyalty to the brand,no?

I’m not under the impression that there are many takers on the a340-600. Unless there is a broader deal here – beyond 20 frames – I think China Eastern may have gotten the better end of this transaction.