FedEx Agrees to Buy $10 Billion of Boeing 767 Jet Freighters
FedEx Corp. agreed to buy 50 Boeing Co. 767 freighters with a list value of about $10 billion, the model’s largest-ever order, as it upgrades the fleet at the FedEx Express unit.
The order gives new life to the 767, which was developed in the 1980s and pioneered long-range flights for twin-engine jets. FedEx Express, the world’s biggest cargo airline, is the last remaining customer as passenger carriers shift to newer aircraft such as Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner and Airbus Group SE’s A330.
“We appreciate their confidence in the airplane,” Doug Alder, a spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing, said July 21 in an e-mail.
Deliveries of the 767-300F jets would run over a five-year period starting in fiscal 2018, according to a statement from Memphis, Tennessee-based FedEx. The transaction includes options for an additional 50 aircraft, and FedEx said the company’s firm 767 orders total 106.
For Boeing, the deal is a victory amid a tough market for wide-body aircraft and ensures more work on commercial versions of the 767 while the plane maker develops an aerial tanker based on the aircraft for the U.S. Air Force. Meanwhile, FedEx extends its strategy of replacing older, less fuel-efficient planes such as the tri-engine MD-10 with new models.
The order “will enable us to reduce structural costs, improve our fuel efficiency and enhance the reliability of our global network,” FedEx Express CEO David Bronczek said in the statement.
Boeing and FedEx had been in talks on an order of at least 25 of the aircraft, people familiar with the matter had said. FedEx directors met in Seattle, the plane maker’s commercial hub, earlier this month, the people said.
Both the civilian and military versions of the 767 are built at Boeing’s plant in Everett, Washington. Buyers typically get a discount from catalog prices.
