By David Shepardson
FARNBOROUGH, England (Reuters) -Aircraft lessor AerCap Holdings on Tuesday agreed to buy five additional Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner jets as the U.S. planemaker nears a resumption of deliveries.
“We believe in this aircraft,” said AerCap Chief Commercial Officer Peter Anderson at a press event at the Farnborough Airshow. “We see an opportunity to build on a bet that we placed on the 787 a while ago… We think the 787 is an aircraft of the future.”
Separately, aircraft lessor Aviation Capital Group LLC said on Tuesday it had ordered 12 additional 737 MAX 8 jets. ACG Executive Chair Mahoko Hara said the move “will help position ACG’s order book for a recovery in air traffic coming out of the pandemic.”
Boeing Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Stan Deal said on Sunday the U.S. planemaker was “very close” to restarting 787 deliveries, which have been halted since May 2021 as Boeing works through inspections and production issues.
Boeing only briefly resumed 787 deliveries in March 2021 after halting them in late 2020.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Sunday the agency “will sign off on each delivery only after Boeing demonstrates the aircraft meets FAA safety standards”.
Anderson said AerCap had not been holding off on ordering more planes until Boeing neared a resumption of deliveries, but added that “it certainly helped”.
He said he sees global demand for long-haul fuel-efficient travel. “We see demand for the aircraft, we see that market coming back strongly,” he said.
AerCap, the world’s largest 787 customer, now has 125 787 Dreamliners in its portfolio or on order.
Deal said on Tuesday Boeing is studying how to add more capacity to its production system to potentially build 737 MAXs, but wants to make sure the supply chain can handle any increase.
He said the MAX, which was grounded for 20 months after two fatal crashes that killed 346 people, has been “rebooted”, noting more than 1,000 orders since the grounding was lifted in late 2020, including Delta Air Lines’ order of 100 MAX 10 models on Monday.
“I think you can check the reboot box and now we’re just into the normal Boeing versus Airbus, continuing to compete hard for each customer’s business,” Deal said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Jan Harvey)
