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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.
C.R. Roberts is a Tacoma native. Before joining The News Tribune, he worked as a freelance writer and part-time cowhand on a cattle ranch in Northern Idaho. He writes about small business, personal finance and other business issues.
John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.
Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.
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Boeing says it's seriously talking with eight or ten airline customers about buying the passenger version of Boeing's new 747-8.
The updated version of the venerable jumbo jet has accumulated 110 orders, a respectable number a year before the plane's first flight, but most of those orders are for the freighter version of the plane.
Only Lufthansa among major airlines has ordered the passenger version called the 747 Intercontinental.
Boeing Chairman Jim McNerney said he expects the plane will generate orders for passenger versions of the plane before the year is out.
"The guys are working this hard," said McNerney.
The 747 has received only one order this year, from an unidentified customer who wants to use the jet for personal transportation.
McNerney's comments came during a quarterly earnings call.
Other news nuggets from that call:
* Boeing is still undecided whether it will update its 777 to compete with the largest version of Airbus' planned A350, the A350-10. The Boeing chairman said the company still has several years to see how Airbus does with the A350 and how the airline industry reacts before making such a decision.
* A major economic downturn for U.S. domestic airlines will likely have only a minimal effect on Boeing's order book, McNerney said. Most of the company's airliner backlog is due to foreign airline orders financed through the U.S. Export-Import Bank, he said. Order cancellations and deferrals could amount to six or seven percent of Boeing's orders, but with a five-year-backlog, those reversals will have little effect on the company's production.
* Despite three delays and parts shortages with its new 787 program, Boeing won't repudiate its new production and design scheme that outsources responsibility to major partner companies around the world, the Boeing CEO said. On the next major aircraft program the company "might draw some lines in different places," McNerney said. "There might be more of an adjustment to our strategy rather than a change," he said.
