The inventory of completed or almost completed 787s grows at the Boeing flightline in Everett. So far this month there have been two 787 deliveries, both made from he North Charleston final assembly site though one of the delivered aircraft was an Everett built frame for Air India.
Testing continues to be very slow with only one aircraft going up for a single test flight per day on average. Obviously Boeing is in the middle of inspection of the shear ties in the wings where cracks may have developed when fasteners were over-tightened with out gap fillers. Given the dearth of 787 flight activity from Everett, it appears that many of the 787s in the batch that includes L/N 151 to L/N 193 Many of these aircraft have been built or are in final assembly. The wing crack issues only exacerbated the delays in the 787 production stream bought on by increasing traveled work in the mid-body fuselage from South Carolina. The increase in traveled work, as you may recall, was caused by the laying off of about 600 experienced contract employees from Charleston coupled with the increase in production of the 787 and the introduction of the 787-9 into the production system.
I don't expect Boeing to deliver more than 2 more 787s this month one to Qatar Airways and one to Japan Airlines. Thus I expect the inventory of 787s to grow through at least mid April then to decrease thereafter but the only way to figure that out is to watch the flight activity out of both Everett and Charleston.
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
Monday, March 17, 2014
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
11 comments:
A pretty glum forecast for the third month in a row. One can only conclude that at block point 120 significant changes were planned during the last three years. This may be an unannouced change in the production works that matches up with the block point goals that were initially set into the program plan. The wing cracks are a production side show and another boat anchor to production. The problems in Charleston is significant enough that Boeing needs to wrestle it to ground during this time period. April should kick start the new production surge into the fall until the end of the year. Right now its a watch and learn participation.
What an absolute mess. Very disappointing.
Uresh (or anyone), do you know if there is a problem with the 4th -9 (LN146, ZB197)? It rolled out quite a while ago but has not flown. Or is it waiting for testing by the others so that it can just be modified for delivery?
Nothing is wrong with it, if doesn't née to fly until later in the spring
Is there evidence that A7-BCJ delivered before A7-BCI? Or just a guess? http://www.skyliner-aviation.de/regdb.main?LC=nav4&page=4 shows BCI going first.
Any idea how many planes affected by the wing problem have been fixed. I assume the new ones are going direct to EMC because of this
Planes are going to the EMC to mainly finish traveled work but also for wing inspections and fixes if necessary. I don't know how many are affected.
If you look at the wonderful tables from Uresh, you will note that A7-BCJ has been delivered and A7-BCI has NOT been delivered.
If I recall correctly A7-BCI has had issues with the paint job in Ft. Worth and hung there for way too many weeks. Then it was flown to Portland to have the paint job redone. It is now in Charleston ready for delivery.
Actually BCI was delivered last week and BCJ will deliver around Tuesday or so.
I see 3 of the "wing issue" planes are ready for delivery: 153, 155 and 156.
Great news and shows they are on it as far as correcting the problem and very timely.
The log jam appears to be busted and we should see a number of planes ready for delivery once the test flights are caught up.
I have not read anything on the resolution of the GE engine icing problem that was reported as due to the software.
What was the final resolution?
Post a Comment