Paul G. Dubeck

'We were set to deliver 538 aircraft this year and will now deliver 500,' says Paul G Dubeck, sales director international sales. 'And for 2002 our plans to build 520 aircraft have now been scaled back to 400. The first 10,000 staff to be laid off will receive their notice this week, and leave on December 15'.

Can this massive reversal of corporate fortune be entirely due to September 11?

'I am afraid so,' admits Mr Dubeck. 'We can see some signs that the situation is beginning to stabilise in the United States with travel stable at a lower level, but a lot of our customers have put their orders for aircraft on hold. That leaves us no alternative but to reduce our costs in the face of declining revenue.

'However, we are confident that the demand will come back. Most of the customers deferring aircraft purchases will still have to replace aircraft in the future, and that means at some point we will have to deal with a huge uptick in demand to catch up. But we can not build aircraft and then sit on them'.

Mr Dubeck alludes to the time of the Gulf War when it took 15-18 months for business to get back to normal, though he concedes that the global impact of September 11 on air travel has been more widespread. And he believes that Swissair and Ansett may not be the last airlines to go bust because of the sudden way the whole travel industry has been hit.

Boeing is also looking again at safety features in its aircraft to combat terrorism such as bolts on the pilot cabin doors, though many improvements will not be made public for obvious security reasons. 'The US has always been such an open society and that has compromised our thinking on security, but now our thought process has changed forever,' says Mr Dubeck.

Meanwhile, Boeing is spending $2m on its presence at the Dubai Air Show this November which Mr Dubeck rates as one of the best in the world alongside Paris and London. 'We will have a hundred staff here from Boeing, which includes the three roughly equal divisions of missiles and defence aircraft, space and satellite as well as commercial aircraft.

'The Dubai Air Show has a wonderful reach across the Middle East and we always find it a valuable show. This is not always the case, and indeed I agree with the people who say that there are too many air shows in the world right now'.

So far Mr Dubeck says that no airline in the Middle East has cancelled any orders with Boeing in the light of recent tragic events. And Emirates delivery of five more 777s is on schedule for next year, part of a plan to expand the airline up to 100 aircraft by 2010. Emirates has also been one of many international airlines to take an interest in the Boeing Sonic Cruiser aircraft which should be available in 2007.

'We are talking to airlines about what they would like to see in this aircraft, such as 9,000 miles range, seat capacity and speed,' says Dubeck. 'And the Dubai Airshow will feature a mock-up of the design for this near supersonic aircraft which is now under development. These plans have been unaffected by recent events'.

So it appears the giant Boeing Company is still reeling under the impact of the terrorist attrocities of September 11 but determined to bounce back fast when the terrorist threat diminishes.