Steven Udvar-Hazy, President and CEO of the International Lease Finance Corporation spoke to FlightBlogger this morning in a wide-ranging interview, and revealed that Boeing is exploring development on a new mid-range 787 derivative.
Mr. Hazy revealed to FlightBlogger that Boeing is exploring “very exciting” derivations of its hot-selling Dreamliner to, “…address more of the medium-haul and short-haul end of the market.”
Mr. Hazy elaborated:
It would be, “another version of the 787 that is lighter, that addresses more the performance capabilities at a different, at more the medium haul end of the market. That might be a more practical product line that will have a wider application with more customers than the -3 and we’re encouraging Boeing to come up with a 787 derivative to address that middle market which has wide global appeal to airlines in North America, European airlines, Middle East, China and South America and intra-Asia and US trans-con market and so forth. The dash three doesn’t quite do it. It seems too heavy.”
In addition, Mr. Hazy also felt that development of the 787-10 has “somewhat stalled” for a number of reasons.
“I think the Boeing engineering and product team is totally focused on the 787-8 and -9 and also getting the 747-8 intercontinental airplane into production and get it certified both the passenger and freighter. With the weight creep on the 787-9 there’s some real issues that have arisen, for example the landing gear, we have to have to be at a different landing gear configuration on the -10. The wing will have to be beefed up so your creating more weight, which means more thrust which then gets the situation into a regime with Rolls Royce and GE where the original GENx design and the Trent design for the 787 was not intended to be at those thrust levels as to what’s required at the -10. I think Boeing is carefully looking at the -10, but I think it’s slipped in terms of its priority.”
Listen to the complete interview here.
Much more with Steven Udvar-Hazy below the fold
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.