Boeing annual plane orders fall 53 percent

Plane deliveries -- which have a greater impact on the company's immediate financial performance -- also fell 15 percent to 375, chiefly due to a strike by BOEING (BA.NY)machinists which halted production lines for almost two months.

It marks the first year since 2004 that Boeing notched fewer than 1,000 plane orders -- not counting cancellations and other changes. In 2007, it set an all-time industry record of 1,413 orders, boosted by ambitious Middle Eastern and Asian airlines looking to expand their fleets.

Boeing shares fell 50 cents or 1.1 percent to $44.26 on the New York Stock Exchange.

DIP EXPECTED

Industry experts never expected 2008 to match the previous three years, which have been described as a delayed boom caused by airlines catching up with the recovery in the travel market several years after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Orders slowed markedly in the last quarter of last year, as airlines entered a new phase of slower growth in the face of the global recession, and held back from buying new planes.

The industry-wide dip in orders also affected Airbus, a unit of aerospace group EADS , but the European company is still set to beat Boeing for the year, with 756 orders in its books at the end of November and more expected when it reports full-year numbers later this month.

Boeing's 2008 deliveries fell to 375 from 441 planes the year before. The decline was chiefly due to the 58-day strike by its assembly workers, which brought its Seattle-area plants to a standstill between September 6 and November 2, and is still causing the company problems.

Boeing had originally expected to deliver as many as 520 planes in 2008, but that was derailed by the strike and problems on the 787 Dreamliner, its new plane which was supposed to debut in 2008, but is now not scheduled to be delivered to airlines until early 2010.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby, editing by Gerald E. McCormick and Matthew Lewis)