| Boeing to collect $20b from Indian orders. |
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 In 1972, at the depths of a local economic downturn, someone unfurled a large sign at Seattle's Sea-tac Airport that read: Will the last person to leave the city please turn off the lights?Some 35 years later, the sign is a dim and distant memory for this thriving port city. The joke is that the banner has been moved to Detroit. Here, on a sunny Saturday that belied Seattle's famously wet weather, Boeing, a company that is at the heart of the city's economic resurgence and part of a world duopoly in making large airplanes, showcased the revival in an egaging play on numbers. Taking off from one airstrip in Seattle's Everett suburb, Beoing airfield at 7:07 p.m. A Boeing 717 similarly took off and landed at 7.17 p.m, a Being 727 at 7:27 p.m., a Boeing 737 at 7:37 p.m, a 747 at 7:47 p.m and so on. The parade ended with the new-generation Boeing 777 landing at 8:17 p.m. to cap the day marked as 7/7/7. The piece de resistance of this line-up is Boeing's latest plane, the 787 Dreamliner, which rolled out on Sunday. Not since Boeing thrived on its 747 Jumbo Jet, the world's most recognisable plane,has there been as much buzz as the one that accompanies the 787 Dreamliner. Expected to sell about 400 units, the Jumbo is 1000-plus and going strong. In contrast, the Dreamliner 787 has 677 firm orders even before the first one has been flown commercially. Central to Boeing and Seattle's revival is a booming aviation industry in Asia, particularly India and China. Last year, Air India ordered 68 Boeing planes worth a staggering $11.6 billion. The order breaks into 18 short-haul 737-800s for Air-India Express, and eight 777-200 LRs, 15777-300 ERs and 27 Dreamliner 787-8s for Air India, a monolith that has never ordered more than eight airplanes at a time. "It is not only the largest single purchase in Air-India's history, but the single largest order in Boeing's history as well,"says Dinesh Keshar, the company vice-president for sales who is both Boeing's Mr India and India's Mr Boeing. A graduate of Nagpur Engineering College, Keshar is singularly credited with Boeing's dominance of Indian skies. Except for Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher and Indigo, which are Airbus driven, most other airlines in India are Boeing clients. "We have a very close relationship with Boeing,"Naresh Goyal, whose Jet Airways has a 30-plane order with Boeing worth $5billion , said on the sidelines of the 787 roll-out. "We buy them because on every count, their planes are the best." In all, Boeing will collect $20 billion from Indian orders by 2014.
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