Boeing's Billions

Being the world's leading builder of commercial jet aircraft, the Boeing Co. rings up sales records as routinely as it rolls new planes off its assembly lines.

Even so, the sounds from Boeing last week were superlative. A $100 million order by United Air Lines for five giant 747 superjets helped bring the com pany a total of $961 million in new commercial business over the past month, boosted its backlog to a staggering $5.6 billion.

Son of Skybolt. Most of the new business came from airlines' rushing to line up early delivery dates for the 490-passenger 747, the first of which is due in 1969. Counting United's order, Boeing has announced sales of 25 of the giants, worth $550 million, since Nov. 1.

In all, 81 have been ordered, and Boeing expects to sell some 400 over the next nine years. Along with more sales of its bread-and-butter 707s and tri-jet 727s, Boeing also picked up its first major Pentagon order since 1958. Under an initial $236 million contract, the company will develop and produce a nuclear-tipped SRAM (for short-range attack missile), a sort of son of Skybolt that can be launched from airborne bombers, guided to targets 100 miles away. SRAM may be worth $1 billion to Boeing eventually.

In part, Boeing's surge stems from the late 1950s, when the company stepped up its sales effort to secure the 707's lead over its newer rival, Douglas' DC-8. Now, Boeing services include free computer studies made by a 100-man staff of airline industry analysts. If requested, says Boeing Marketing Director George R. Sanborn, the studies will show "how an airline should go about getting a maximum share of the market away from a competitor"--using Boeings, of course.

Lift for the SST. The company has also revved up its relations with the Pentagon, which stunned Boeing by awarding the TFX (now F-lll) fighter to General Dynamics in 1962 and the giant C-5A cargo plane to Lockheed last year. Boeing's massive research and development program should help it to capture a bigger share of aerospace and defense work. Among the potential $1 billion-plus projects up for grabs: the AMSA (advanced manned strategic aircraft) bomber project.

For the immediate future, of course, the big plum is the contest to build a U.S. supersonic transport. With the Government due to choose between the Boeing and Lockheed designs next January, Boeing's prospects got a lift last week. After ten U.S. and 20 foreign airlines responded to a secret Government survey of design preferences, the Wall Street Journal polled the lines on its own. "By a narrow margin," said the Journal, they favored the Boeing SST.

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