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Hawaiian aircraft Hawaiian Airlines announced an order for 10 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners while canceling an existing order for six Airbus A330-800neos.
- The Dreamliner was selected after an intense sales competition between Airbus and Boeing.
- In an interview with Business Insider, Hawaiian Airlines CEO Peter Ingram explained why his company decided to abandon its long-standing Airbus order and go with Boeing.
On March 6, Hawaiian Airlines announced its decision to order 10 Boeing 787-9Dreamliners with a list price of $2.82 billion. It was also the first major move the airline had made since Peter Ingram took over as president and CEO less than a week earlier.
Ingram previously served as Hawaiian’s chief commercial officer under former CEO Mark Dunkerley, who retired this month.
For Boeing, the announcement proved to be a double shot of good news.
At the same time as the Dreamliner announcement, Hawaiian also confirmed that it had canceled an order for six Airbus A330-800neos. It was the only six orders Airbus had for the aircraft type.
Hawaiian’s decision to go with Boeing is the culmination of an intense and protracted sales competition between the 787-9 and the Airbus A330-900neo. As a result, Hawaiian is believed to have received a very substantial discount off the list price.
“Both airplanes are terrific and both had pros and cons,” Ingram told Business Insider in a recent interview. “Ultimately, we came to a conclusion after a disciplined and detailed process that the 787-9 is the right airplane for us.”
Hawaiian’s decision to go with Boeing surprised some people. Over the past few years, Airbus had been on a roll with the Honolulu-based carrier. Hawaiian is replacing its Boeing 767-300s with smaller and much more efficient Airbus A321neos. More significantly, the airline’s current flagship is its fleet of two dozen Airbus A330-200s.
Since the A330neo is simply an updated version of the A330 Hawaiian already has in service, it would make perfect sense to simply upgrade to the newer model of the plane it already has.
In fact, Ingram called the A330neo order “a natural extension” for the airline.
So how did Boeing manage to pull off the win?
The story goes all the way back to 2008, when Hawaiian placed an order with Airbus that included six next-generation A350-800 jets.
With room for about 280 people, the Dash 800 is the smallest member of the A350XWB family of carbon-composite wide-body jets. Even though the European airplane maker was able to find plenty of buyers for the plane, the company decided to effectively give up on it in favor of developing the A330neo. (Neo stands for new engine option.) The neo would also be available in two sizes: the smaller A330-800 and the larger A330-900.
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Airline CEO explains why Airbus lost a major order to Boeing
