1st Air Canada 787 expected to be delivered in second week of May

Air Canada is expected to take delivery of its first 787 around May 12th subject to successful completion of all flight testing activities. ZA610 (LN 160, C-GHPQ) flew 3 test flights already though the 1st one had to be cut off 5 minutes after takeoff due to some packing foam left in a duct as well as a leaking door seal.  Both issues have been rectified.  ZA610 should conduct the 1st customer flight (C-1) on April 30th as an Air Canada crew is already in Everett to prepare for the customer flight(s) and to take the aircraft back to Toronto.  Delivery is scheduled for May 12th but the aircraft is to remain at in Everett until May 18th when it will fly away to Toronto.  The aircraft will have some special events and well as conduct some flight operations in Toronto but will start flying commercially on May 21st between Toronto and Montreal and Toronto to Zurich after that.  It is due to commence its regular run between Toronto and Haneda-Tokyo on July 1st.

Meanwhile April 787 deliveries are looking to be limited to about 5 to 6 aircraft in total.  Norwegian may have taken delivery of its 2nd fully owned 787 today and Qatar, it appears are trying to get their 13th 787 delivered before the end of the month.  There were two test flights for ZA472 (LN 150, A7-BCM) today, April 28 which indicates that they are trying to get in under the wire. Undoubtedly the the reason for the low delivery rate this month was due to the wing issues as well as the travelled work.  I do think deliveries should rebound next month as the issues are slowly being put behind them.  There were a couple more B-1 flights in the last couple of days.  Production flight tempo seems to have increased slightly but as long as it is maintained then May deliveries should be good.  Boeing needs to deliver between 12 ad 14 787s in May to stay on target for 110 Dreamliner deliveries this year.


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Boeing makes final 2013 787 delivery push

Boeing has started making its final push to deliver as many commercial jets as possible before the and of the year.  As far as the 787, Boeing has thus far delivered 6 aircraft in December, 16 for the 4th quarter, 60 for 2013 and 109 overall since deliveries began over 2 years ago.  This includes ZA187 (LN 125, JA833J) for Japan Airlines which is contractually delivered but has not made its delivery flight for unknown reasons.  It is expected to flyaway to Tokyo in the next few days.

There are still a number of 787s that are ready of delivery including a trio for China Southern Airlines.  It's been a while since these airplanes have taken a flight but I believe the reason is so Boeing and China Southern can have a bit of a splash and conduct a triple delivery on one day prior to year end.  Boeing will also deliver one more to QANTAS (Jetstar) which has had 4 flights (maybe one or two more needed) and will deliver the first 787 to be configured as a business jet to the UAE (via ILFC).

It stands to reason that Boeing can deliver 65 787s this year.  Their guidance is over 60, thus they'll clearly meet their guidance.

As far as production is concerned, it looks as if Boeing is right now producing at about 9 aircraft/month. There was a hiccup due to a mishap (don't have details) on the main fuselage section for ZA388 (LN 154) for China Southern.  that aircraft was loaded today but it did set back the production schedule, according to my calculations, by 18 days.  ZA244 (LN 158) for Air India, leap-frogged over ZA388 and started final assembly before ZA388. ZA388 was originally supposed to start final assembly around November 19th. ZA244 was loaded into POS 1 on December 7...an 18 day gap between planned and actual loading of the fuselage sections and an approximately 1 month gap between the loading of ZA244 and ZA472 (LN 150) for Qatar Airways.  Boeing Charleston is loading one aircraft approximately every 14 to 15 days or about 2/month. For the record, Jack Jones, VP and general manager of Boeing Charleston says that they are tracking to plan in terms of 787 production.  Boeing is loading a 787 roughly every 4 days at Everett and that rate should get a little bit faster.  Later on when Charleston is ready to go to 3/month, we should see the period between loadings go up slightly to about 1 airplane ever four and a quarter days.

One interesting thing to note is production quality of the 787 coming off the assembly lines.  One way to measure this is to see how many test flights, on average, a Everett-built 787 makes before delivery and compare that to the number of test flights that a Charleston-built 787 makes.  Taking out the 2 ferry flights that Boeing has to make to and from Ft. Worth for painting, I find that Charleston-built 787s fly an average of 6.25 flights before they are delivered while Everett-built 787s fly an average of 5.10 flights before delivery.  Really just one flight more which in the grand scheme of things is not a whole lot. 

A bit of programming note.  I will post a 787 2013 year in review around the end of the month or early in January followed by a 2014 look ahead for the program.

Here are couple of links from Boeing's media day at Boeing Charleston:

Post and Courier photo gallery

Post and Courier Article

Charleston Business Journal Article

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