Jim McNerney, president and CEO of General Electric, gave a powerful vote for the money-making potential of the Airbus A3XX "superjumbo" here Monday, describing it as "a unique aircraft in terms of airline operating costs and top-line revenue-producing potential."

GE has teamed with Pratt & Whitney to offer the Alliance GP7000 turbofan for the A3XX, in competition with the Rolls-Royce Trent 500.

Even though the Trent is now the engine of reference for the A3XX, McNerney expressed few doubts about the potential of the Alliance engine: "After all," he said, "between us we have 85% of the installed engine base on large airliners, and I'd rather go into things with that behind me than just (Rolls-Royce's share of ) 15%."

More important, McNerney was bullish about the future of the A3XX itself, saying, "Even the conservative sales estimates for the A3XX will support two engine manufacturers."

"Airbus predicts 750 A3XX sales, at $240 million each," he said. "Now I don't know if the $12 billion development cost is accurate or not. It doesn't matter. Any way you run those numbers that is a wildly successful program.

"We are not with the nay-sayers who project 250 A3XXs-and even then there's still money to be made," McNerney continued. "I would say that there is a market for at least 500 aircraft out there. Airbus have thought very deeply about this. They have IPOed the business and they have a lot of serious considerations to deal with. If they have projected 750 sales then I'd say they'll be within 10% of that.

"I believe in the aircraft, or else I wouldn't be spending money developing an engine for it."

By Robert Hewson