Aircraft
Boeing’s Sinnett Addresses Cost Fundamentals of New Midsize Airliner
Fuel economy, maintenance costs and training costs are top considerations.

No one can know precisely what future technology will find its way onto a new airplane that might not appear in service until a decade from now, but Boeing vice president of product development Mike Sinnett seems to have a clear idea of what developmental “levers” the company might pull in its efforts to fill the market space between the 737 Max 9 and the 787-8. During a Paris Air Show briefing on Monday, Sinnett named fuel economy, maintenance costs and training costs as the top considerations.

“Fuel burn reduction is really important to us, and it always has been,” he said. “If you look at where we are today, we burn 70-percent less fuel than we did with our first-generation jet aircraft. The 737 has improved fuel burn by something like 1.4 percent per year for the last 40 years. So that’s a natural thing and that will go on forever.”