Has Until December 1 To Make Up Its Mind

Boeing is holding out an olive branch of sorts to Russia's OAO Aeroflot, extending the carrier's deadline to place an order for 787 Dreamliners until December 1. The move comes as Aeroflot has increasingly hinted it would opt for Airbus' A350 instead.

This latest development adds yet another tangent to the twisted story surrounding a rumored 22-plane order from the carrier. (At one time, Aeroflot even hinted it would double that total.)

After going back and forth several times with the American aerospace company, Aeroflot missed the original November 1 deadline that would have guaranteed first deliveries of its 787s by 2010.

Sergei Koltovich, head of Aeroflot's fleet planning department, told Reuters the airline missed the deadline due to delays by Russian goverment officials.

Any Dreamliner orders placed after November 1 wouldn't be delivered until 2014 -- right about the time the oft-delayed Airbus A350 is slated to begin customer deliveries.

That was before Boeing granted the one-month extension... but even if Aeroflot gets its order in before December 1, that doesn't necessarily mean Aeroflot would see its first Dreamliner any sooner.

"The conditions that we reached originally remain the same, but the delivery time has been moved to a later date," Koltovich said.

Aeroflot has been trying to decide between the Airbus and Boeing aircraft for more than a year. An order for Boeing's 787 would further bolster that airliner's impressive order numbers; if Aeroflot went with Airbus, it would be a vote of confidence for a design that the planemaker's parent company, EADS, has yet to formally approve production of.

Someone pass the Tylenol...

FMI: www.airbus.com, www.boeing.com, www.aeroflot.com