Boeing Moving Ahead on New Planes PARIS - Boeing's full-court press to address the risk of battery fire on its flagship 787 Dreamliner jet earlier this year has not slowed progress on the American company's other planes still in development, including a revamped version of its popular 777 wide-body, Raymond L. Conner, chief executive of Boeing's civil aircraft division, said here Sunday. However, he acknowledged that the company was still struggling to dispel lingering questions among some passengers and pilots about whether the measures Boeing had taken to eliminate those risks were sufficient. "It's unfortunate, but it's just reality," Mr. Conner said of the blow that the Dreamliner's battery troubles had dealt to the company's reputation. We have to address it head on. Speaking to reporters gathered here for the biennial Paris Air Show, which begins Monday, Mr. Conner said he expected the heightened scrutiny of the Dreamliner's performance to continue for at least several more months, noting that there had been a similar public reaction following the midair explosion in 2010 of an engine on an Airbus A380 operated by Qantas Airways. Smoke and fire erupted from lithium-ion batteries on two Boeing 787s in January, prompting a three-month grounding of the entire Dreamliner fleet. The company subsequently marshaled more than 250 engineers from across various civil and military aircraft programs to develop a permanent fix to the problem, which involved a redesign of the lightweight, but highly volatile, batteries and encasing them in a steel box to eliminate the risk that a battery fire could spread and damage critical flight systems. The Dreamliner began returning to the skies in April after safety regulators in the United States, Japan and other countries approved Boeing's modifications to the battery. The company has so far delivered 60 of the planes, with another 830 on order. Despite the diversion of engineering resources to fixing the battery problems, Mr. Conner said Boeing remained on track in the development of a planned stretched version of the 787, known as the 787-10, as well as a new version of the 777, called the 777X, that would be fitted with carbon-composite wings and more fuel-efficient engines. Speculation has been mounting in recent weeks that Boeing could reveal its first airline customer for the larger 787 during the weeklong air show, which is taking place at Le Bourget Airport, north of the French capital. Mr. Conner declined to comment on media reports that a handful of airlines, including British Airways, were poised to announce orders for the new 787, which is expected to seat 320 passengers compared with 210 to 290 seats on the Dreamliner models currently in production. Singapore Airlines announced last month that it was prepared to order as many as 30 of the stretched 787s as well as an equal number of Airbus's forthcoming A350-XWB, a rival wide-body jet that made its inaugural flight Friday. Mr. Conner said Boeing intended to compete aggressively against Airbus to lure airline customers to chose its twin-engined wide-body planes like the 787 and the 777 over the three variants of the A350, which can seat 250 to 350 passengers. But Mr. Conner rejected speculation that the two companies might be tempted to enter into a price war for the sake of capturing market share. "The bigger thing is the value proposition," Mr. Conner said. It is going to be a healthy competition.