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.

Transaero Airlines to get early build 787s

I got word that Boeing has officially allocated 3 very early build 787s to Transaero Airlines.  The three frames are ZA800 (LN 11), ZA801 (LN 12), and ZA803 (LN 14).  All three were previously going to be delivered to ANA but has since asked for later built 787s.  Boeing still has about 7 more that need to be re-allocated to other airlines.  These are among the group of 787s that are known as the "terrible teens."  It has been rumored that Transaero would pick up these aircraft from Boeing on the cheap when they closed on the order of 4 787s early last year.  It's also rumored that Lion Air will be picking up their 5 aircraft from this block as well but that change has yet to be reflected in the system.

Production flight testing has picked up today with ZA318 (LN 94, G-TUIB) for Thomson making its first flight today.  ZA512 (LN 83, JA818A) made it 12th flight and this aircraft should be delivered to ANA late next week though it still has to go through customer acceptance flight(s). Two Charleston built 787s for Hainan  swapped places today as ZA431 (LN 76, B-2722) flew back to Charleston and ZA433 (LN 81, B-2723) flew to Ft. Worth for painting from Charleston.