Boeing says in response:Boeing Co. is considering pushing back the first deliveries of its flagship 787 Dreamliner by at least six more months to account for the recent strike by union machinists, as well as other snags in getting the troubled jetliner airborne.
According to people familiar with the situation, Boeing officials are expected to announce later this month that the first deliveries of the fuel-efficient jet might not occur until as late as summer 2010, more than two years after the jet was originally scheduled to enter service.
In recent days, these people said, Boeing officials have been meeting with suppliers and partners on the jet program in an effort to get their arms around a number of challenges that have sprung up in part because of the volume of work that Boeing outsourced on the program.
We are currently conducting an assessment of the 787 program schedule. We will communicate it when it is complete. We do not have the exact timing yet on when that communication will occur.The Journal has a knack for serving as a 'leading indicator' to an official BCA announcement..
on December 4, 2008 11:53 PM | Reply
Cool ! Anyone to cancel orders ?
on December 5, 2008 1:18 AM | Reply
Awesome. Beoing sure knows how to bend the pooch over a desk and screw it hard.
on December 5, 2008 2:10 AM | Reply
A delay with such an order of magnitude allows customers to cancel their orders without penalty. However, when you don't see any challenger aircraft in the 2010-2014 time frame you can hardly cancel your order.
Let's wait and see who will be the first to cancel.
on December 5, 2008 4:55 AM | Reply
lg Qantas answers your question.
"The challenging conditions must also make it tempting for Joyce to cancel at least some of its orders for 115 Boeing 787 aircraft (the first of which is due next year).
A 58-day strike at Boeing's factories near Seattle that has delayed aircraft deliveries allows Qantas to abandon its orders while still receiving damages from the aircraft manufacturer.
"While we wouldn't want to do it, the 787 is so far delayed that our contract allows us to walk away from it," Joyce told Bloomberg late last week. "We still want to take the 787 and we plan to take them, but we do have options with them.""
from
http://business.smh.com.au/business/rubicon-triplets-go-their-separate-ways-20081201-6oug.html
And then the Boeing's money could foot ,a part, of the tab of an A350-1000 orders for example.
JS
on December 5, 2008 7:18 AM | Reply
I would say, based on what we know, that summer 2010 is the earliest realistic delivery date for the first aircraft. It will probably be a bit or considerably later again than that - around two and a half years late.
One thing I picked up from Airbus' dossier is that Boeing and its partners will struggle to ramp up production following first delivery. So I expect cumulative delays of five years or so for planes further down the line, unless there are significant cancellations along the way. Planes originally slated for delivery in 2010/11 will be delivered around 2015. This means Boeing will lose several hundred sales either in the form of actual cancellations or lost opportunities where new slots have to be reserved for the backlog.
on December 5, 2008 8:29 AM | Reply
Watch Sales for the A330 start to pick up in about two months time. Cancellations will only start occuring once firm alternatives have been considered and ordered. No one will want to lose their place in the queue.
on December 6, 2008 2:01 AM | Reply
Jon, do you ever have days where you think the 787 will never fly and Boeing will just keep changing bolts till they go bankrupt?
on December 6, 2008 2:24 PM | Reply
it is staggering to consider the mulltitude of unrelated problems the 787 program is facing and so late in the game. that so many of these problems surfaced so recently almost defies imagination.
it will be fascinating to compare the -8 payload/range curve at EIS with those in the purchase contracts. and what about the ICAC (initial cruse altitude capability) at EIS, how degraded will that be?
I could go on and on with other performance parameters and cost factors. I have always been a Boeing guy, but the ineptitude of the 787 program is appalling. Seems like Rube Goldberg designed all the gizmos and the supplier/assemby sequences. and Rube's partner, Murphy (the inventorof Murphy's Law) also got to work on every detail in this mishmash. I too am starting to wonder if it will ever fly. Rube and Murphy sure outdid themselves.
on December 6, 2008 3:49 PM | Reply
to stang:
the problems are not unconnected,
all center around insufficient QA
stemming from the naivite of thinking big.
( There exists an SF story about an
armsrace of unproven fantasy weapons
on earth
.. until aliens with "real" weapons
enter earth orbit )
And they surfaced to the public eye the moment
actual "hic rhodos, hic salta" performance was
required.
First flight is a waypoint you can't pass with
fibbing and brightly coloured PPTs.
( And Boeing isn't even there yet. )
I think this is quite a bit different to the A380 where
Airbus stumbled over incompatible CAD tools (ever
embarassing, for sure ).
The intensive and staged press RahRah on that issue
was the perfect ( and conciously done ) preparation of
the public for the unfolding Boeing disaster.
At this moment most people think that Boeings probs
can't be worse than Airbus two years ago.
But this is IMHO not the case. Nobody knows what
further issues will crop up until the maidenflight
and on into FAA qualification.
uwe
on December 7, 2008 9:40 AM | Reply
The A380 disaster.
At the root it was not a technical problem, AFAIK, it was one of the numerous aftermaths of the third french/germain war of the last two centuries.
Forgeard with the help of Chirac, tried a "coup de force" to up-seat the two-heads direction and to impose himself as the sole leader. That started a trench war all over again between the two camps with a severance of all communications.
It was a miracle that AB survived.