Wichita ? Returning the airline industry to profitability while improving aircraft efficiency and safety will dominate The Boeing Co.’s contract talks with its machinists union, the president of Boeing’s commercial airplane group said Tuesday.

Alan Mulally spoke at a news conference in Wichita, where negotiators were opening talks on a new master contract covering 26,100 workers at Boeing’s major plants in Washington, Kansas and Oregon. The current three-year contract expires Sept. 1.

“We are looking at our customers and looking at the state our industry is in and then finding a way for the Boeing Co. and all of us associated with Boeing to help our customers come back from this horrible situation they are in worldwide to get the economic development of the world to come back, to get the travel to coming back, to get the airlines back to profitability so they can continue to order new airplanes,” he said.

Finding a way for Boeing to help its customers is the No. 1 focus of the contract talks, he said.

“At the end of the day, if we can’t help our customers be more efficient and operate even more safely around the world, then anything we decide wouldn’t make any difference,” Mulally, a Kansas University and Lawrence High School graduate, said.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers has said its three key issues in the negotiations would be jobs and job security, a decent retirement plan and affordable health care.

Chief union negotiator Dick Schneider said union members received a lot of pink slips both before and since the attacks.

The current contract covers 20,000 members in Washington, 5,000 in Kansas and 1,100 in Oregon.

“It is our full intent as a union to go into this to achieve a contract not a strike,” Schneider said.