Boeing started 2018 with the delivery of 9 787-9s and the certification of the next 787 model to be delivered to customers, the 787-10. I was expecting Boeing to deliver 11 787s this months but it appears that the delivery of a couple of Dreamliners has been pushed to February. Boeing has now delivered 645 787s since program deliveries began in September 2011.
Yet all in all this was not a bad month as they also rolled out 10 more 787s including another -10, the first one that will be delivered to Singapore within 2 month (Boeing confirmed the March delivery during their 4th quarter earnings conference call). You can expect a few more 787-10s to be coming out of Charleston over the next few months. In the meantime ZC036 (LN 548, N548ZC) the 787-10/GEnX-1B powered test aircraft continues with flights to certify the GE powered version of the -10. Etihad Airways should get the first GE powered 787-10 around October but it should be certified long before that month.
As mentioned earlier, Boeing released its 4th quarter 2017 earning which blew the lid off the market for sometime this morning. Boeing continues to be pleased by the continued reduction in the deferred production costs of the 787 program. During the previous quarter the production costs came down by $591 million to about $25.4 billion. Boeing is attributing the continued reduction in the cost savings measures they've instilled in the 787 program as well as cost reduction initiatives instituted by the various suppliers. The introduction of the -10 into regular production should help with unit profitability but it will be a few years before the profit margins on the -10 have an impact financially simply because there aren't a whole lot of -10s being produced this year (and probably next year. compared to the -9 which will be the majority of 787s produced in the coming years. \
Certainly when Boeing goes to 14 airplanes next year and more of that mix is the -9 and -10, I expect that the rate of reduction of the 787 deferred production costs should increase.
Finally, I expect 10 Dreamliners to be delivered in February including the final 2 787-9s for United Airlines. They still have 14 787-10s on order of which I expect them to receive 4 this year.
Again, you can keep track of the status of the Dreamliner production and deliveries by checking out my 787 spreadsheets.
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