August 787 deliveries appears to be slipping

Looks like Boeing won't be delivering as many 787s as we all thought in August as sources tell me that there looks to be slips in some deliveries from August to September.  I'm not sure about any knock on effect, if any, would be to downstream deliveries.  Earlier I reported that Boeing could deliver as many as 7 Dreamliners this month.  One has already been delivered and it does appear that there could be as many as two this coming week, one to ANA and one to Qatar. There has been some slowdown in 787 flight test activity and not as many B-1 flights as I thought would have taken place by now in order to make 7 deliveries by the end of August.  At this point I'm not sure which 787 deliveries are being pushed to September and as always delivery information should always be taken with a grain of salt due to nature of the 787 program and customer preferences.

As far as Air India and the 787, everyones' favorite topic, I've been hearing new estimates for first delivery ranging from this week to sometime in mid to late September.  This is one that I've stopped believing in any estimates not that the people who gave the information are wrong but that Air India is so disorganized and mismanaged that it's not possible to figure when they'll take actual delivery. This airline has the ability to come to the table and at the very last minute pulled the rug out at the delivery ceremony and refuse to take delivery and make the final payment.  One thing is for sure...Boeing is ready to turn the aircraft over to the airline, three of them with a fourth waiting in the proverbial wings.  So what is the problem?  Though no one has spoken publicly about it in definitive terms, the fact that Air India is actively (read: desperately) trying to arrange financing to pay for the deliveries. The Ministry of Finance has put the hold on the deliveries though they haven't made publicly why they put the hold on after the Indian Cabinet itself had approved for the deliveries to take place in accordance with the compensation agreement hammered out between the airline and Boeing.  Air India financial health is in a very precarious situation that banks aren't exactly lining up to extend any financing even if the 787s were used as collateral.  The management of Air India and the GoI has taken pains to being down this airline and to frag its once stellar reputation through the mud.  The drama continues.