A Russian state holding company plans to buy 50 Boeing 737 commercial jetliners in a deal worth up to $4 billion, President Barack Obama said on Thursday. State-owned Rostechnologii 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 Russian 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 in Seattle, Wash.
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.
Rostechnologii plans to provide Russian airlines with planes that will help them grow their domestic and international operations alongside flag-carrier Aeroflot.
