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

Full 787 List

Current 787 Production List

Delivered 787 List

787 Monthly Delivery Tracking

787 Customer Delivery

787-9 Flight Test Hours

Current 787 Operators