Jetstar Airways Pte, the budget airline unit of Qantas Airways Ltd., will get compensation from Boeing Co.

for the delay in delivery of the 787 aircraft. The 787 delay will force Jetstar to postpone the start of flights to Europe for “a few months,” said Alan Joyce, the unit’s chief executive, speaking to reporters in Singapore. Boeing’s second delay of the 787 Dreamliner will hinder Jetstar’s expansion plans, including setting up new bases in Southeast Asia. The carrier will get its first 787 in May, 2009, nine months behind schedule. “It doesn’t affect our existing operations, but our long- haul operations get delayed for a few months,” Joyce said. He declined to say how much the airline will get in compensation from Chicago-based Boeing. Boeing’s suppliers failed to complete production work on time. The plane’s setbacks echo the two-year delay that Airbus SAS suffered with the introduction of its A380 aircraft, forcing the European planemaker to compensate airlines. “I expect a slight delay but probably not as long as nine months,” Samer Majali, Chief Executive Officer of Royal Jordanian Airlines, said at a briefing in Hong Kong today. Their order for 787 aircraft will be delivered starting from 2010 and “it’s too early to talk about compensation,” he said. Boeing now has 841 orders for the 787, which was delayed for a second time Jan. 16, pushing back its first delivery into early 2009, at least eight months later than originally scheduled.Chan Sue Ling, Bloomberg