Boeing conducts 6 new 787 first flights in one week.

UPDATE (6:38PM): Looks like Boeing has delivered LAN's 3rd 787 today.  Flightware shows a 787 delivery flight leaving Everett at 5:10PM local time for Santiago, Chile.

Boeing is quickening the pace of flying production 787s on their first flight.  Starting on Dec. 1, Boeing has sent up 6 different 787s for their first flight, otherwise known as the B-1 flight.  It appears that Boeing is aggressively trying to ramp up deliveries of these airplanes before the end of the year.  In addition to these 6 airplanes making their first flight, several others have had follow on test flights either by Boeing or customer pilots on several other 787s.

The planes that flew were as follows:

12/1/12
ZA271 (LN 78, SP-LRB) for LOT Polish Airlines

12/3/12
ZA464 (LN 82, A7-BCC) for Qatar Airways

12/4/12
ZA510 (LN 59, JA817J) for ANA

12/6/12
ZA512 (LN 83, JA818A) for ANA

12/7/12
ZA287 (LN 52, N27903) for United Airlines
ZA183 (LN 84, JA829J) for Japan Airlines

Obviously not all of these will be delivered this month, most notably ZA271 but I do still believe Boeing can deliver 8 787s this month possibly going to 10 if Air India sorts out its financial mess.

Given this pace, I can see Boeing delivering a couple airplanes next week but the bulk of deliveries should come around the week of December 17th.  The plan would be for Boeing to fly more test flights next week in preparation for delivery the following week (week of Dec. 17th). Boeing will be mostly closed during the week of Christmas but not fully shut down so we can certainly still see a couple of deliveries during the week of Dec. 24th depending on customer availability and needs.

I have made changes to the notes of some of the airplanes in the table.  Notably I am tracking the number of tests flights that each airplane takes during pre-delivery. After delivery I note which order it was delivered to that particular customer (i.e. ANA #1 meaning the first airplane delivered to ANA, etc.).