Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Boeing conducts inspection of Alenia built 787 parts

James Albaugh, head of BCA, gave us quick update of the787 program. among the pieces of information he revealed is that Boeing is doing more of the design work for the 787-9 and is making very good progress with the next 787 version.

However, Boeing is finding more issues with Alenia built parts on the 787 and as a result is conducting more inspections of all the 787s built to date. As of now I do not know what these issues are or which Alenia built parts are subject to the new inspections but Boeing wants to make sure that these parts are "up to Boeing standards." This may explain why the 787s have flown on a limited basis for the last week and a half. Only today did ZA001 and ZA004 flew on an extended basis accumulating about 11 flight hours between the two test flights.

Boeing is planning to move more 787 production in house and I won't be surprised if Alenia's contract to build 787 sections is taken away from Boeing and would be produced at both Everett and Charleston in the next 5 years. Much of this is based on reviewing Alenia's 787 production and assembly in Grottaglie which was initiated by improper workmanship on the horizontal stabilizers. There seems to be no complaint of the Japanese built sections or the parts produced by Spirit. Albaugh also said that Boeing is quite happy that they bought out Alenia's share of Global Aeronautica (now name Boeing Charleston) as well as all of Vought's share of the 787 program.

James Albaugh also said that ZA006 should fly later this month though sources have told me that September 12th is still the date that is being shown on internal Boeing schedules. Albaugh also said that they have delivered 70% of the required certification documentation to the FAA though they've only completed about 47% of the test flights hours so far. Boeing can conceivably be at the 50% mark in about 10 days depending on the pace of test flights.

Bloomberg: Boeing Inspects 787 fleet

3 comments:

Gianfranco said...

Hello Uresh,

Can we imagine that the program could need less than the 2400 flight hours initially programmed (for the first type of engine) ? I remember an interview of a 787 flight test pilot, saying that they had scheduled 3 or 4 days for a specific test (don't remember which one it was), and finally they did it within 2 hours...

So is it possible that the 2400 hours won't be required, or not at all ?

Thanks in advance for your reply.

Uresh said...

Oh absolutely, the thing is we hav ereceived no other guidancce from Boeing. Though it is also possible that the FAA want's to see it's performance over the 2400 flight hours also thus they would need to fly all 2400 hours (for the Rolls Royce engines).

Gianfranco said...

Ok, thanks Uresh.