Chile and Australia are emerging as possible buyers of the eight Boeing F/A-18C/D fighters which the cash-strapped Royal Thai Air Force now looks unlikely to be able to finance.
None of the aircraft has been delivered so far.
Speaking at a press conference in Singapore yesterday, Joel Johnson, vice-president, international of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) of America, said that the number-one priority was to try and help the RTAF to find methods of funding the purchase, worth $400 million.
The Thai government is said to prefer a deferred payment plan to outright cancellation of the order. "However," he says, "we have to accept that this might not be possible and then it will become a case of helping them to find a buyer.
Confident
"A series of meetings in Bangkok is scheduled for the coming weeks and months and I am confident that a solution will be found."
Commenting on the economic crisis in the region, Johnson says that Thailand's payment difficulties are the only example so far of the potential collapse of an (USA) order.
"We regard the difficulties as short-term. Asia has now passed Europe as the United States' largest export customer and the 50-strong AIA remains confident that growth will soon recommence and that the current problems will be overcome reasonably quickly."
* Organisers of Farnborough 1998 had better watch out - that's the word from the Americans.
Johnson quipped at a press converence on Monday that Asian Aerospace '98 is the third successive major international airshow to find its flying and static display ranks depleted, thanks largely to the activities of Iraq's Saddam Hussein in the Gulf.
Source: Flight Daily News
