Boeing Commercial Airplanes President & CEO Scott Carson may not have realised the sudden interest his comments may have caused toward certain media and listeners at his opening briefing this past Monday at Le Bourget - but the stunning way(s) in which Carson’s views were then interpreted in the Tuesday morning publishing’s being distributed by GIFAS staff to attendees of the biennial Paris Air Show demonstrated two fundamental things.

First - that those who had attended the first Boeing briefing of the week had selective hearing.

Second - that they showed why they are not employed in the aerospace business because of their inability to understand the context of what Carson was saying.

So let’s cut to the chase – yes, Carson said Boeing may look at a possible new wing for the 777. Big deal.

The real deal is the context, overlooked by pretty much everyone in their quest to publish Carson’s remarks as some kind of “official” green light that this was the path Boeing would now navigate to update the 777 against the largest Airbus A350XWB variant, the A350-1000.

Boeing 777 Freighter wing in Everett, WA

Image copyright/owned by FleetBuzz Editorial.com

Since the Airbus A350 was (re-launched, re-launched, re-launched) re-launched in late 2006, only four customers have amassed just 75 orders for the A350-1000 variant to date. In contrast and in the same time period, Boeing has secured 170 orders, just for the 777-300ER.

“I’m not surprised [Carson's] talking about that,” said Airbus’ John Leahy. “He’s going to lose the market if he doesn’t do something.“

This is not the first time Boeing has said what they could do to counter any possible perceived threat to the 777 family.

In previous discussions with Boeing’s VP Marketing Randy Tinseth, he identified a range of options that the company has at its disposal, ranging from a new wing, use of new material gained from experience with the 787, new engines and perhaps even an all new design. (Of course, an all new design would have direct implications for a possible 787-10 variant too…)

Let us not forget the key reason why Mr. Leahy says what he does – it’s precisely because Airbus’ skewed focus on pouring over $22bn (and growing) into a contracting niche with the financial calamity that is the A380 that Airbus simply got a classic case of a “double whammy” – being hit firstly by the breathtaking performance of the 777-300ER followed up with the runaway success of the 787 Dreamliner family.

Equally, Leahy had proudly boasted that he would “do nothing” in response to the 787, yet has had several cases of doing something until the A350XWB got a better spectrum of appeal – as a direct response to the 777 and 787.

“You have to remember that we were a step ahead of Airbus and that forced them to do something,” said Boeing’s SVP of Communications, Tom Downey when he and I spoke just yesterday at length on the subject.

So there you have it.

Of course, this piece of little history is routinely missed by all and sundry and quite frankly is wholly disingenuous to the entire 777-787-A350 conundrum.

As Tinseth pointed out this week to me on the sidelines in Paris, the company “has time on its hands” to respond to the A350-1000XWB. Most critically, one of the largest customers for the A350 program overall, Emirates, has said time and again that it is not satisified that the A350-1000 cannot match the 777-300ER’s superior freight uplift, which accounts for a significant proportion of its revenues – even more so as the airline battles a collapse in premium passenger yields.

Equally, Emirates Tim Clark at Le Bourget admitted that the A350 “doesn’t give Emirates the payload and numbers we need,” – perhaps the first admission, at least publicly, that the A350-1000 is not all its cracked up to be, as exemplified by its rather paltry backlog against the backdrop of $16bn+ for the wider A350XWB program. And then there are the little matters of Airbus being unable to provide even a generic figure for OEW for any of the A350 variants and funding using more of taxpayer’s money to finance the response to the 777 and 787.

The critical aspect in all of the to-and-fro ideas about what could/should be done is that it all depends on whether Airbus achieves its objectives on the A350 program in an attempt to respond to the 777 and 787. It’s taken them over a decade to accept that long range twin engine airplanes is the way forward – not even they would argue against that when you contrast the sales figures of just the A350 against the A380.

Re-winging an airplane isn’t a bad option – look at the 737 Next Generation and contrast that to the A340-500 and A340-600. While some will argue that the 747-8 family hasn’t had much in the way of success either, that too is an airplane that has time on its hands to penetrate the marketplace – principally because the 747-400 replacement has yet to start en masse.

Boeing clearly is not yet ready to commit to any particular solution – the primary driver of course, as has always been, will be the customers. The A350-1000 has a long road of its own to encounter, and with many airlines holding much farther back than Airbus would have us believe, the 777-300ER is still sitting pretty without a challenger for quite a few more years.