Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Charleston still building 787s but not rolling them out

With Boeing's North Charleston plant building a 787 once every month, there is an expectation that we would be seeing more airplanes on the ramp at Charleston.  However it has been more than a month since Boeing rolled out an airplane from building 88-03.

The planes being worked on (currently) at this plant are earmarked for Air India and two of the three Chinese customers (Hainan and China Southern).  Given the issues surrounding these customers, it is not anticipated that deliveries will be made anytime soon or if they are delivered, it would be a glacially slow pace.  787 assembly at Charleston is completed in four position, just like the 787 line in Everett. It is my belief that Boeing is going to take its time rolling these airplanes out of the Charleston factory and will use the extra positions within the assembly hall to store a couple of airplanes. There are 8 flightline spots at Charleston so there isn't a lack of room.  The only reason to keep them inside to to ensure all assembly tasks are completed and to protect the airplanes from the elements.

I've listed LN 76 as stored but its location is inside building 88-03 in Charleston.

9 comments:

CX880 said...

Greetings. Just wondering what's going on with ZA382 for CZ? I saw from Matt Cawby's photo it is at position 101, and in your lineup it's "Pre-delivery Flight Test". Please shed some light. Thank you.

Brent said...

I'm not sure why Boeing would slow down at Charleston. I would think they would push through as quickly as possible on the currently undeliverable frames (even holding off on final assembly tasks and flight tests) to get to frames they can actually deliver when they are ready.

Has AI secured their bridge financing? There is a lot of flight activity on the AI frames in Charleston with flights that look like customer acceptance flights.

Unknown said...

Is this real? Latest Qatar 787 on the delivery flight developed problems similar to Uniteds last week?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-13/qatar-airways-boeing-787-grounded-with-same-fault-as-united-jet.html

Uresh said...

Seems so

Unknown said...

Thomson is aiming for delivery in March of 2013: http://www.thomson.co.uk/editorial/features/787-dreamliner.html

TurtleLuv said...

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/UAL6857

TurtleLuv said...

line 55 delivery

TurtleLuv said...

caught a pic

Uresh said...

Thanks for sharing!