Boeing to delay first 787 deliveries by 6 months

BOEING Co has long promised that its 787 Dreamliner will fly faster and farther than any other medium-sized jet, use 20 percent less fuel and offer increased cabin comfort.

Now the first all-new American commercial jetliner in more than a decade also will be at least six months late.

Acknowledging that early problems assembling the first 787 have disrupted its schedule, the aerospace company said yesterday it is delaying initial deliveries of the ballyhooed aircraft by six months. Instead of next May, the first deliveries are now targeted for late November or December 2008.

The first test flight, already pushed back once from the initial target of early this fall, now is not anticipated until around the end of the first quarter of 2008.

The delay highlights inherent problems in building new airplanes and could slow the momentum Boeing built up after years of lagging behind European rival Airbus, which itself stumbled in introducing its superjumbo A380 two years behind schedule.

Chairman and CEO Jim McNerney expressed disappointment over the delays but said the problems relate to the company's supply chain, not to any structural or design problems.

"We are very confident in the design of this airplane," he said on a conference call. "It'll be a 25- to 30-year success _ one of the fundamentally new things in aviation."

The 787, Boeing's first newly designed jet since airlines started flying the 777 in 1995, will be the world's first large commercial airplane made mostly of carbon-fiber composites, which are lighter, more durable and less prone to corrosion than more traditional aluminum.

Boeing has said it will be cheaper to maintain and offer better fuel efficiency and more passenger comforts than comparable planes flying today.
 
But the company said its effort has been shadowed by difficulty getting the right parts from its suppliers on time as well as shortages of fasteners and other small parts that hold large sections of the plane together.

Boeing said the postponement will not materially affect its earnings or guidance for next year but will cause it to push back an estimated 30 to 35 deliveries of 787s from next year to 2009. The delay also will cost Boeing undisclosed penalty pay to customers.

Company executives said an aggressive production schedule will enable them to keep close to the longer-term plan, with 109 deliveries still expected by the end of '09 compared to the original target of 112.

McNerney had publicly voiced confidence as recently as four weeks ago that the airplane maker would be able to deliver the first 787 on time next May to Japan's All Nippon Airways Co. But his pronouncement was greeted skeptically within the industry since the company already had altered its timeframe.

On Sept. 5, Boeing formally pushed back the first test flight to mid-November or mid-December. That would have left the company just five to six months before the first delivery, or about half the time it took to test the 777 a decade ago.

In August, when the company first acknowledged problems meeting the original test-flight schedule, it cited software and systems integration activities as contributing to the holdup. Scott Carson, head of the company's Seattle-based commercial airplanes unit, said those problems no longer are a key issue.

Carson said the difficult structural work on the first airplane is nearing completion and the plane came off its jacks Sunday. Work on the second 787 to come down the line, called a static test airplane, will move ahead as work on the first plane accelerates, he said.

"The issue really driving today's decision is the traveled work and parts availability on airplane No. 1," Carson said, referring to the work suppliers are supposed to do at their plants but that Boeing has been doing in-house. "It has simply proved to be more difficult than we anticipated to complete the structural work on the airplane out of sequence in our Everett factory."