Russian Technologies will buy 50 Boeing 737 commercial jetliners in a deal worth up to $4 billion, U.S. President Barack Obama said Thursday.
The state corporation and Boeing signed a "proposal acceptance" with an option for the sale of 15 additional planes to the Russian national airline, Aeroflot, the White House said.
Obama announced what amounted to the agreement in principle at a joint news conference with President Dmitry Medvedev. He hailed it as an example of expanding bilateral trade and commerce 20 years after the end of the Cold War.
The sale of 50 Boeing single-aisle aircraft worth $4 billion "could add up to 44,000 new jobs in the American aerospace industry," Obama said. The deal was one of several signed at a U.S.-Russia business summit coinciding with Medvedev's visit to the United States.
Boeing beat out EADS's Airbus and Russian state airplane manufacturers for the order. The company looks forward to finalizing an agreement, said Jim Proulx, a spokesman for Boeing's commercial aircraft arm.
The deal is a "prime example of how closer commercial cooperation between our two countries is in our mutual interests," U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said.
Russian Technologies chief executive officer Sergei Chemezov said the company chose Boeing earlier this month in a tender that also involved Airbus and Irkut.
Boeing and its larger competitor, Airbus, want to boost sales in Russia as the country’s airlines, led by Aeroflot, look to renew and expand their fleets.
Separately, Boeing? said it signed a five-year contract extension for VSMPO-Avisma to supply titanium products.
Boeing will buy titanium forgings and rough-machined forgings from VSMPO-Avisma that will be used on its 787, 777 and 737 commercial aircraft for an undisclosed amount, the plane maker said in a statement.
The agreement extends deliveries by VSMPO-Avisma, the world’s biggest titanium producer, from 2011 through 2015. The Ural Boeing Manufacturing venture machines titanium forgings for the planned 787 Dreamliner.
Boeing said it expects to spend as much as $27 billion on Russian titanium, aerospace design and engineering and other services and materials in the next 30 years.
(Reuters, Bloomberg)
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