Friday, June 8, 2012

Boeing's 787 inventory plan

Boeing has about $24bn in 787 inventory sitting around Paine Field in Everett waiting to be delivered.  They have 9 planes in preflight 5 for ANA , 3 for AIr India and 1 for Qatar Airways. After that they have 39 more that have to go through change incorporation. Looking at what has been delivered, what is going to be delivered and the air frames that are undergoing change incorporation, one thing stands out clearly:  Boeing will prepare and deliver the later built air frames (airplanes 31 to 65) as they require significantly less rework compared to airplanes 4 to 30.  Boeing will continue to focus on getting airplanes 31 to 65 out the door with change incorporation along side the airplanes that don't need to go through the costly change incorporation.  Many of these late planes don't need much re-work at all thus allowing Boeing to get them to customers faster and book the revenues sooner.

The numbers tell the story. 

Of the 11 airplanes that have been delivered 4 are LN 30 and below (36% of the deliveries so far). 

Of the airplanes that are currently ready to be delivered (the 9 in preflight) there is one that is coming from the batch of LN 30 and below (11% of the 9 airplanes that I categorize as preflight). 

Of the airplanes that are currently in the change incorporation process (in building 40-24, EMC or other buildings for re-work purposes) there are 5 out of 11 airplanes which I categorized as actively going through change incorporation (as opposed to storage/change incorporation Dreamliners which are mainly being stored).  That is about 45% of the 11 airplanes being worked on.

Of the 28 airplanes that I count as being stored (not actively being worked on), 16 are from LN 4 to LN 30 or about 57%.  I expect that by the end of this year most of the airplanes from LN 31 to LN 65 will be in customer hands. 

As Boeing works through the late builds they'll start to switch to re-working the early build 787s and prepare them for delivery but in doing so, these airplanes will spend more time in the EMC thus slowing down deliveries from the change incorporation batch of 787 in 2013-2014.  I think it is reasonable to assume that Boeing cost for these airplanes are going to shoot through the roof owing to the amount of work that has to be done on these airplanes.
In other news, Boeing is finally getting some of the preflight 787s back into the air.  ZA507 (LN 48, JA810A) should be flying today as will ZA509 (LN 56, JA812A) which will be making its first flight.  It does seem that deliveries are getting close but I have yet to get any information about this.
Boeing is now trying to finalize an order for 5 787s with Batik Air (owned by Lion Air).  No word on when this will be finalized or which version of the 787 they're buying.




8 comments:

Unknown said...

Nice work on the spreadsheets. BTW, it might be interesting to track "date entered change process" for the remaining frames... I think the one thing missing from your analysis is the customer, I would guess that some of the scheduling of the work will be based on what the customer needs...

greg said...

I suggest that you switch colors in the spreadsheet:

* Red: strorage (no change)
* Yellow: change incorporation (from green)
* Green: final preps (from blue)
* Blue: delivered (from yellow)

This scheme is a more natural progression on the color spectrum.

TurtleLuv said...

i was gonna suggest color coding the chart as well, and approve. however, i think it would look best if you only color coded the "Aircraft Dispostion" column. It would make the whole chart a bit less overbearing to the eyes.

graeme77 said...

Well it seems that the optimism for 8-9 deliveries this month will not be vindicated. For some reason very few flights have taken place since May 25. LN 47 flew a month ago and there is no word of its delivery yet. If it will take a month from first flght to delivery for the others, it means that LN 51, LN 56, LN 58 and LN 66 will not be delivered in June. If the mess with Air India is not cleared up by the end of the month only LN 47 and 48 will be delivered in June, for a sixty day total of two aircraft and a disappointing quarterly performance.

Rob said...

LN #'s 47, 48, 50, and 51 all seem to be close to ready, LN 56 is going to have 1st flight Monday. We have seem some customer flights from this group as well. LN 29 and 35 can deliver as soon as Air India has financing in place. LN 46 is painted and of course has had first flights. It has been reported that the Charleston planes were going to come off the line pretty close to ready.

I see 7 deliveries as not only a possibility, but as likely. With line 66 not painted etc. I don't think it will make it, but I bet it will be delivered before the analysts conference call in July. The plane for Qatar also does not look like it will make it. But it has been committed for July.

I am thinking we will see LN 66, 67 and maybe 68 deliver for July as well as 1 for Qatar (LN58) and I was told JAL has added some early August 787 flights, so maybe one of the JAL birds that are in the EMC. That would mean 5 for July.

With the planes rolling out straight to pre-flight that means 3.5 deliveries a month plus whatever they can get out of the EMC and the Charleston aircraft. This is starting to get fun!!

Uresh said...

You can also think of it this way: Boeing will now be delivering 787s straight from the line starting next month at 3.5/month. Even though that rate is to go up to 5 later this year, let's assume that it delivers 3.5 for the next 6 months starting in July straight from the line...that's 21 deliveries for the rest of the year straight from the line alone. I' also going to assume that they deliver 2/month from the inventory sitting around Everett starting in Jluy. That is another 12. Now add in expected deliveries this month say 7 and 3 from Charleston which was stated already and the 8 already delivered thus far this year and you have:
21+12+7+3+8=51 total deliveries

Henman said...

So for the AI frames, we're waiting on government approval of the new compensation deal. That economic committee meets at the end of this week to vote AFAIK according to some of the Indian news articles.

What's the deal with the ANA frames? Why the hold up? Is this all related to the Boeing test registration flights with ANA frames from the end of last month? I think Matt Cawby alluded to them being for some kind of software update? Maybe ANA wants this update added before accepting any further deliveries?

Hope you guys have something with which to enlighten us. Uresh, thank you as always for your work. And thank you also Matt, if you're looking.

ZuluGolfOscar said...

AWESOME info here, well done!

Question;

Will the 787-9 REALL be flying 3rd quarter 2013, and in service with Air NZ April 2014??

And what of reports from Boeing that the 787-10 will be ready BEFORE a 777X upgrade!