Huge news broke by Jon Ostrower. It looks like that ANA will be receiving 11 787s in the first 3 months when deliveries start in Feb. 2010. It seems that the Chinese carriers are not taking 787 deliveries for now. They have been complaining that the 787-8 is falling short of their expectations.
Jon is also reporting that Delta will not be taking up it early deliveries though all these carriers still have their orders intact. It seems they're going for the later deliveries far upstream. Boeing has indicated that the first 20 aircraft built will be overweight and the aircraft thereafter should meet weight specs that were originally promised and contracted for.
Lastly Jon reports that the 6 test aircraft have not been allocated to any customer even though Boeing previously said that ZA001 and ZA002 will go to ANA, ZA003 and ZA004 will go to Delta, and ZA005 and ZA006 will go to Royal Air Maroc. It seems that this not going to be done but will be allocated to carriers after they have been refurbished. Read Jon's story here.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
7 comments:
Uresh,
What do you think is behind these changes? Is this advantageous or disadventageous for Boeing?
I think that it's the Chinese airlines economic situation coupled with the early 787s being overweight that is behind the reshuffling. It's not good fr Boeing because it does place some doubt as to whether the 787 will ever meet it's contractual weight, range, payload and fuel efficiency targets. I think it will with the later production models (after LN 20). It's good in that there are airlines who are going to step in to the void and pick up these airplanes thus bring deliveries forward for those airlines who desperately need them and also reducing the amount of late payments that Boeing has to pay out.
Look at the end of the day Boeing will make improvements to this airplane, it will be an extremely efficient airplane and the customers who want them will get them.
Uresh,
How easy is it for Boeing to gain the weight reductions needed to meet the promised criteria.
Will that be accomplished by delivery ?
Boeing has some weight reductions in the work some of which might appear by airplane 7 or retrofitted at a later date. A lot of the weight reductions will come after the test flight program nd the fatigue test program is completed and Boeing can identify parts that are over-engineered and target those parts for weight reductions. The later airplanes will be the gbetter performing airplanes becuase they'll have the weight reductions incorporated. The first twenty planes will be overweight no matter what and that will include those that are scheduled for delivery early next year. Boeing will not be delivering weight spec airplanes until airplane 21.
Ureas,
I assume that the Carriers taking these planes know this and accepted them for reasons that probably included substantial discounts.
Uresh,
The ZA007 will be the first example to meet the weight target originally guaranteed to customers.
Whereas the first 19 example, NOT 20, will be less than 4 tonnes overweight with which your partner Daniel has reported.
ZA020 is the first example to incorporate wing design changes resulting in significant weight saving...
and ZA020 will be the first example to meet its publicized weight target...
Eric
Eric,
That is not my understanding. I believe that ZA001 to ZA020 will not meet the contractual weight target but starting with ZA021 all 787-8s will meet that weight target. That's why the Chinese carriers and ILFCs Chairman are not to keen on the early production (first 20 787s off the line starting with Dreamliner 1) models. They will have weight and range issues. After that it should be fine. One thing to note is that Boeing has to (if they haven't done so already) officially weigh the 787. Really when ZA007 rolls off the line and is weighed then Boeign will have an idea of what they're up against in terms of weight. Everything else are estimates.
Post a Comment