Market Presence. The B777-200 has experienced the fate of most initial variants of a new model -marginalization within the first decade of service entry. The difference for the -200 lay with the expectation that such an outcome could be avoided or at least delayed. Initial financings of the B777-200 made great play of the payload/range characteristics of the -200 but avoided the historical benefit of improving payload/range capability. The placement of only 88 orders since being launched over 19 years ago is testament to how unfavorably operators view the capabilities of the -200. With only 11 operators, the -200 falls far short of the perceived desired minimum of 20 operators. Yet the operator base is reasonably well distributed with Asia, Europe, North America and the Middle East all being represented. Tradition also indicates that initial customers would retain the type for a more than a decade, reducing the potential for a surplus. The problems of United caused an upset to such tradition, precipitating early availability for a type that was always likely to be less than popular on the open market.
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