Boeing responds to Type Inspection Authorizaton questions.

Earlier I asked Boeing about the delay to the TIA for the 787. Specifically, why was it delayed (no answer on this), when they will expect to receive it and impact to the schedule. Here's Boeing's response:

We have not received TIA yet but we expect it very soon. We continue to
accomplish meaningful progress in flight test and the exact timing of this is
not impacting margin.

So the important thing to take away from this is that Boeing expects no schedule impact from the delay of issuance of the TIA. To review the Type Inspection Authorization is the FAA certificate which allows FAA engineers and inspectors aboard the 787 for the certification flights. The issuance of this certificate formally kicks of the certification test flights that Boeing is required to perform in the presence of FAA personnel and represents the bulk of the test flight program. When James Albaugh spoke at the JP Morgan conference last month he had said that they expect the TIA by the end of March. He also said that Boeign had eaten into some of the margin in the order of 4 to 6 weeks.

It was expected that Boeing would have had the TIA by mid February but that was delayed to end of March (thus losing about 6 weeks of margin. The fact that Boeing is saying the additional delay to the TIA will not impact schedule margin means tha they have some sort of remediation planned to keep the certification test program on schedule.