Charleston, US: Boeing Co.’s newest and largest 787 Dreamliner rumbled down a South Carolina runway, nudged its nose into the air and took flight for the first time — ahead of schedule.
The early take-off served as an emblem of the 787-10’s relatively drama-free development program, according to Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg. Riding on its wings are the company’s hopes of turning the 787 into a cash machine amid a forbidding market for twin-aisle planes.
The maiden flight is “a big, big milestone for us and our customers,” Muilenburg said on a company webcast of the event. “We’re bringing innovation to the marketplace.”
Boeing’s most technically advanced jetliner is no stranger to the spotlight. For the plane’s public debut last month, it was rolled out of the North Charleston factory to serve as the backdrop for President Donald Trump’s address at the plant. The aircraft is the third Dreamliner model, an aircraft family boasting hulls made of spun-carbon fibre and cabin-humidity levels that lessen jet lag. It’s the first Boeing plane to be manufactured outside of the Seattle area.
Jet Debuts
The flight marked the third maiden voyage in a busy week of commercial-jet debuts. The A319neo, the smallest of Airbus Group SE’s upgraded single-aisle jets, also took wing for the first time Friday. Brazilian plane maker Embraer SA celebrated the first flight of its E195-E2 on Wednesday.
The 787-10 figures large in Boeing’s efforts to wipe away $27.3 billion in production losses lingering from the Dreamliner program’s rocky beginning. It also gives the Chicago-based plane maker a direct competitor to the sleek Airbus A350-900, which is made of carbon-composite panels.
“It starts to step on the very crisp, clean new competitor that Airbus has out,” said George Ferguson, senior air transport analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.
The new Dreamliner stretches 224 feet (68 meters), eight feet longer than its European rival, and its cabin capacity of 330 travellers is designed to carry five more people than the Airbus plane. But the A350 has a longer range and has outsold the 787-10, garnering 602 sales to 149 for the Boeing aircraft.
While Airbus had the benefit of launching its jet years earlier, the European plane maker has struggled to speed production amid supplier shortages. The 787-10 won a key campaign with Singapore Airlines last month and could pad its order book further if its market entry next year proceeds as smoothly as initial production, Ferguson said.
Cash Need
Boeing is counting on the 787-10 to mirror the drama-free development of the 737 Max and 787-9, all products of a disciplined process it fashioned for new planes following the delay-plagued debut of the 787-8 nearly six years ago. The new jet is the most expensive Dreamliner yet, with a list price of $312.8 million, and its market entry should coincide with growing profits for the aircraft family.
The plane maker has just started to generate cash from its marquee jet after a decade, and will need to record an average profit of about $35 million per plane over the next 779 Dreamliners to avoid having to report an accounting loss for the program. Company executives insist they can get there by combining savings from suppliers with higher pricing on the 787-9 and 787-10 models, the Dreamliners with the greatest profit potential.
The variants share about 95 per cent of the same design-and-build processes, honed after Boeing’s troubles delivering the initial 787-8 more than three years late in 2011. Doing so meant the newest 787 and its tooling felt familiar to Boeing mechanics in South Carolina.
“It’s almost anticlimactic because it just went so smoothly,” Mark Jenks, a Boeing vice president and general manager of the 787 program, said on a company webcast Friday. “This doesn’t happen a lot of times in a Boeing career. We have learnt a lot across our development programs.”
Boeing faces a challenge to notch sales for the newest Dreamliner in a wide-body market that’s already pressuring pricing — and that’s before any collateral damage from Trump’s tough talk on trade with China, a critical aircraft market. A glut of used Boeing 777 and Airbus A330 aircraft, fuelled by high production rates and cheap oil, is stifling sales of new long-range jets, said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group.
