Business | Aviation
Dreamliner likely to be delayed by three more weeks
Boeing faces a further three-week delay on its new 787 Dreamliner, a respected industry blog reported on Wednesday, as the plane maker hustles to meet its end-March deadline for getting the plane in the air for the first time.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:32 January 10, 2008
New York: Boeing faces a further three-week delay on its new 787 Dreamliner, a respected industry blog reported on Wednesday, as the plane maker hustles to meet its end-March deadline for getting the plane in the air for the first time.
A delay would be an embarrassing blow for Boeing, which only last month insisted the 787 was on track to meet its revised schedule. In October, Boeing put back first delivery of the plane by at least six months due to production problems.
"Internal schedules show the overall assembly calendar for Boeing's Dreamliner One around three weeks behind the revised schedule," a post on FlightBlogger said on Wednesday, citing unnamed sources in Everett, Washington, where Boeing's 787 facilities are located.
A spokeswoman for the 787 programme did not confirm or deny the FlightBlogger report on Wednesday, saying only that Boeing is "focused on our milestones for airplane No. 1."
The next milestone is turning on the first 787's systems - known as "power on" in the industry -which is scheduled for the end of this month.
The first test flight is slated for around the end of March. Boeing risks missing both dates if reports of a three-week delay are correct.
"To make up time, Boeing has shifted significant manpower resources to achieve the aircraft 'power-on' milestone by month's end," the FlightBlogger post said.
Referring to the facility where the plane is being assembled, it said, "Work in Building 40-26 is almost exclusively focused on meeting this target on time."
"We had heard others gloomily stating that additional delays were running into several months, so a three-week figure should not cause too much concern," said Robert Stallard at Bank of America, in a research note. "Certainly in the decades-long life of the programme it would prove to be an irrelevance."
Boeing's shares fell 1.23 per cent to $78.42 in early afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, their lowest level since October 2006.
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