Market Presence. The final sales tally of the –300 at 55 represented a disappointment for Boeing but it is interesting that the B797 is now targeting a portion of this seating capacity. The limited number of deliveries needs to be placed into the context of an overall successful B757 program. With amortized development costs for the B757-200 no longer an issue, the potential profit margin for Boeing increased such that the manufacturer was able to extract between $2-8m profit from sales. Assuming that the cost of developing the –300 was only around $100-150m, then only between 40-50 sales were required to breakeven. Sales of the –300 at around 55 were limited but eliminated a significant portion of the development cost (notwithstanding launch customer discounts). The lack of orders from the operating lessors (GECAS however tends to order aircraft powered by GE engines) underlined the difficulties of the -300.
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