Saturday, December 31, 2011

Dec. 31st - no sign of further 787 deliveries

Today is December 31st, 2011 and there has been no further evidence of any other 787 deliveries beyond the ones made in September and October.

This doesn't indicate that ANA and Boeing has concluded the formal signing over of the aircraft and transferring of money and signing of documents. That may well have happened already but no aircraft has left Everett bound for Japan as of yet and there has been no announcement from Boeing or ANA of the formal delivery of any of these airplanes. ZA116 (JA805A) is still in Everett and has flown both Boeing and customer flights but I don't know if there are more test flights that have yet to be done or if there is any more work that needs to be concluded on the airplane itself. This Dreamliner is probably the one that is closest to being delivered.

The other two airplanes ZA104 (JA807A) and ZA102 (JA804A) have done some customer flights out of Everett but probably need to do a few more flights before ANA formally accepts them. I do think that Boeing can deliver all three airplanes within the next week in order for ANA to meet its newly revised international 787 service schedule. It is to start Tokyo - Beijing service in the middle of January and Tokyo - Frankfurt service in February.

As far as other airplanes, ZA236 has yet to make a flight to start finish F&R/ETOPs testing on the GEnx powered 787. There is no word on when that will happen though it has run its engines for the first time just before Christmas though there was a small fuel fire 30 minutes into the engine run. I don't know what effect that has on the schedule as of now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here's hoping with the new year, good news on the Dreamliner will come again. Seems like a while since we've had any.

Cedarglen said...

I'd like to know more about that "Small Fuel Fire." Any further details available?