787 new order development efforts gaining traction at Boeing

Drumming up new orders for the 787 seems to be improving.

Yesterday Bloomberg news reported that Boeing was in talks with Ethiopian to purchase 8 787-8 all of which would come from the stock of existing 787s already assembled and parked on Everett's Runway 11/29 or at the EMC otherwise known as the "Terrible Teens."

This is addition to the two terrible teens that Boeing has firmly sold to Air Austral the Reunion based vacation airline news of which I broke last week.  Boeing sold them LN 15 and LN 22.  The latter was to be delivered later this year but it now appears it will be delivered in May of 2016 while LN 15 will be delivered around October of the same year.

Getting 10 of these airplanes (out of 12) will be a huge boost to Boeing in reducing their inventory while the airlines will still be getting good fuel efficient aircraft at a fraction of their worth.

787s orders are not done as ANA still has to firm up 3 787-10 that they intend to take and QANTAS, who reported excellent earning today, are looking to firm 50 787 options that they hold for delivery starting later this decade.  Turkish Airlines is also expected to place an order for either the 787 or A350 this year which can be significant while Emirates  looks to choose between the 787-10 and the A350-900 possibly around spring to summer time.

Boeing is planning to increase production to 12 airplanes next year.  This increase is expected to meet not just new orders but conversions of purchase rights and options into firm orders by existing customers.  The options and rights need to be exercised by a particular date and with the existing firm order pipeline being filled, attention will now turned to the additional orders from existing clients.

Air Austral orders 2 "Terrible Teen" 787-8

According to sources, Boring will deliver LN 15 and LN 22 to Air Austral, the French holiday carrier.  Air Austral had ordered but did not take delivery of 777-300ER.  It now appears that Air Austral switched the order for the 787-8. It appears they will take delivery on LN 22 this year and LN 15 next year.

This may be the unidentified order for two 787s that Boeing posted on their Order and Delivery website on Feb. 12th though I'm still trying to confirm this.

Weather likely to slow down 787 deliveries over next few days

The Everett weather may be looking to put a hold on deliveries for the next few days and may ground aircraft  all together.  The Seattle area is expecting rain....a lot of it as Mt Ranier is forecasted to have 10 FEET of snow but the lower elevations, while not getting that much, will probably be clobbered as well with large amounts of rain.  Boeing is still stuck at 35 deliveries in total to 8 customers.  There has been some movements of assembled aircraft with ZA504 (LN 15) moving to the Runaway storage area and ZA150 (LN 17) moving to the EMC.  In a surprise move, ZA381 (LN 36, B-2726) was moved to the EMC, ostensibly for change incorporation.  This MAY indicate some movement to deliver 787s to the Chinese (China Southern and Hainan) but it's too early to tell.  This aircraft could easily go back to the temporary parking/storage that it had previously occupied. ZA175 (LN 20) finally made it inside the EMC to continue change incorporation and finally ZA287 (LN 52, N26903) was moved to the paint hangar and should be out soon. Interestingly ZA285 (LN 45, N29601) is still out on the flightline even though it was pulled out of the EMC earlier.

With the Thanksgiving holidays coming up along with the rainy weather in the Pacific Northwest, don't expect too much happening out of Everett this week.  There is supposed to be a line move early next week.  Lastly, there is a rumor that Air India will be able to pay for another 787 this week and fly it away from Charleston but so far nothing has happened.