The upcoming version of Boeing’s best-selling 737, the 737 Max, will have range as good or better than its rival plane from Airbus, the A320neo, a Boeing vice-president claimed today.

Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s commercial airplanes marketing vice president, told FlightGlobal that the Max will have a non-stop reach that make it more than competitive with Airbus’s new version of its A320 family of single-aisle jets.

In recent weeks, Airbus executives have disparaged the 737 Max, claiming the plane won’t roll out on time and won’t meet Boeing’s claims for fuel mileage or weight.

The 737 Max is now scheduled to …

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Continuing with its year-long publicity and familiarization tour, Boeing’s sixth test 787 Dreamliner today landed in Bangkok after a 7,679-mile non-stop flight from Seattle.

Bangkok is the latest stop on a tour that has already has taken the plane to China, the Mideast, Africa, Ireland and several destinations in the U.S.

The composite-bodied aircraft is some 20 percent more fuel efficient than its metal-bodied predecessors in the twin-engine, mid-sized airline fleet allowing it to fly non-stop between more distant cities.

The aircraft Saturday is scheduled to fly from Bangkok to Singapore for that city’s annual air show where …

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The company whose name is synonymous with on-line commerce, Seattle’s Amazon.com, may soon open a physical store to test its prowess at on-the-ground retailing.

That’s the report from Internet site Good E-Reader, which says insiders have told it Amazon will open a prototype of a retail store in Seattle before the holidays this year.

The store would follow the example of Apple and Microsoft, both of which have opened a series of trendy stores in shopping centers and on retail streets.

The store wouldn’t attempt to stock the full range of Amazon’s merchandise — such a store would be as …

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Boeing acknowledged this week it has found one more glitch in some of its new 787 Dreamliners.

Inspection of aircraft already assembled has identified at least three of the aircraft where structural stiffeners in the aircraft’s aft sections have delaminated the fuselage skin.

Those three aircraft, one for All Nippon Airways and two built for Qatar Airways, are being repaired. The three aircraft had not yet been delivered.

The company said the repairs were relatively easy to accomplish and didn’t pose a short-term safety risk.

The stiffeners are horizontal to the ground in the rear section of the aircraft. The …

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The only remaining flying example of the most prolifically produced plane in history, a World War II Russian IL-2 attack plane, arrived this week at the Port of Tacoma on its way to Everett.

The now-rare IL-2 Shturmovik helped Russian repel German forces on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. The armored ground attack plane was famed for its ability to destroy tanks and armored vehicles with its guns and bombs. The plane carried a crew of two, a pilot and a rear gunner who sat in the rear of

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A Seattle-based aviation company, Aviation Partners, whose major product has become a familiar sight at airports around the world has asked a Texas federal court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by European planemaker Airbus.

That suit asks the court to invalidate patents granted Aviation Partners for its “Blended Winglet” technology. Those winglets are the curved extensions that many aircraft now sport at the end of their wings.

Those winglets reduce drag, save fuel and increase the range of airliners on which they are installed. Almost all new Boeing 737s are equipped with those winglets now.

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Rival manufacturers Airbus and Boeing this week have encountered new problems with their largest aircraft.

European safety authorities have ordered airlines operating Airbus’ huge A380 jets to begin inspecting their wings after two A380 operators discovered cracks in some metal brackets in the planes’ wings.

And the Federal Aviation Administration has certified Boeing’s new 747-8 passenger jet for flight only if the auxiliary fuel tanks in the plane’s tail are not used.

Airbus contends those wing cracks don’t pose a safety hazard. The plane maker blames the cracks not on the brackets’ design but on stress to which they …

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A new list of the 10 most popular American companies in China is dominated by Pacific Northwest companies.

Four of the ten companies on the list compiled by 24/7 Wall Street are based in Washington or Oregon.

Those four companies include Microsoft, which dominates the operating system market in China with a 99.3 percent market share, Boeing with a 52 percent market share in commercial aircraft, Nike, China’s leading sportswear provider, and Starbucks, which has 70 percent of the coffee business in China with its 450 stores.

Other companies on 24/7′s list include KFC, General Motors, Coca Cola, Procter & …

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