With 80 percent of its record orders backlog booked with overseas customers, the Boeing Co. should comfortably weather the current U.S. credit mess, CEO Jim McNerney said this morning.

"Right now, these developments aren't having a significant impact on us," McNerney said. "Our commercial airplane backlog is comprised of established, quality customers" - and only 11 percent of the orders are going to U.S. airlines, he added.

During the first quarter, two airlines went out of business - Chicago-based ATA Airlines and Aloha Airlines, based in Honolulu. Another, Denver-based Frontier, declared bankruptcy. And this week, United Airlines parent company UAL announced plans to ground 30 older jets after sustaining losses of $537 million to start the year, the result of soaring fuel prices.

But McNerney noted that roughly 80 percent of the orders in Boeing's commercial jet backlog - which stands at a record $271 million, close to six years' worth of production - are going to buyers outside the United States. Their markets have been less affected by the U.S. economic turmoil - and their orders have guaranteed financing through the U.S. Export-Import Bank, he said.

That's a sharp contract from 2001, when the combination of a U.S. recession, the SARS epidemic in Asia and the September 11th terror attacks caused a sharp decline. Then McNerney said, Boeing's backlog was dominated by U.S. airlines, which canceled orders for some airplanes and pushed back delivery dates on more, resulting in a 60-percent drop in deliveries.

That drop led Boeing to lay off 30,000 Puget Sound workers.

This time, McNerney said, there's such high demand for Boeing jets that if anyone cancels or delays an order, there's another customer eager to take their spot in the delivery line.

And with fuel prices continuing at unprecedented prices, that will only increase the incentive for U.S. airlines to start buying new planes to replace their old gas-guzzlers. McNerney said Boeing's sales teams are in talks with most of them, and he expects orders within 12 to 18 months.

The recently announced Delta-Northwest merger will only help, McNerney said, because the merged airline will have a stronger balance sheet.

So, that's the headline - here are some other interesting tidbits:

• Boeing has figured out how much extra it's going to have to spend to compensate suppliers for lost revenues due to the 787 delays, but it doesn't have a handle yet on how much it's going to have to pay in customer penalties, CFO James Bell said. (Those penalties could be either cash, or in kind - some airlines may opt for cut-rate 767s to get them by until their 787s are ready.)

But for planning purposes, Boeing is figuring that the 787s it delivers in 2009 will bring it zero profit, Bell said.

Even so, Boeing anticipates big increases in profits next year. It's projecting free cash flow will climb from $2.5 billion to $6 billion in '09, with EPS jumping about 20 percent, to a range between $6.80 and $7.

Personally, I suspect it may go even higher in 2010: Boeing will start earning a bit of profit on its 787 deliveries. It also will start seeing much better margins on its good ol' aluminum jets. The planes it's delivering now were sold during the post-September 11 slump, when Boeing had to cut some pretty sharp deals. After it finishes delivering them, it will start building and delivering the planes it sold during record sales years of 2005-2007, which will have much better margins.

My friends in Chicago haven't gotten back to me on when they'll start delivering those '05-'07 planes, but my guess is that they'll start by 2010, at which point Boeing will have even better operating margins than the 11.5 percent it reported today. (Which is still pretty amazing - back in the Condit years, Boeing fought hard to get the margin above 9 percent, and 10 seemed an unreachable goal.)

·         One more thing that will help the margin - a fall back in R&D spending. The 787 delays meant that Boeing wasn't able to release experienced engineers from the Dreamliner program to go to work on the 777 freighter and 747-8, McNerney said. That's meant hiring new engineers - and training them - to work on developing those programs. Once they're all done, Bell said, R&D costs will fall. (The expectation is a 13-percent drop in 2009.)

Given that, it would seem the 787 delays have actually helped the Puget Sound economy. Boeing's March headcount showed 74,517 employees on Washington state payrolls, up about 7 percent from March '07.

•  Speaking of margins, Boeing attributes the improvements to increased sales of airplane services, and big productivity gains, specifically with the 737 program in Renton and the 777 program in Everett. McNerney said "it's an article of faith" that the company will be able to wring more productivity improvements out of those programs in the future.