Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Trent 1000 TEN flies on 787 as Boeing deliveries now stand at 495

For the first time a Rolls Royce Trent 1000 TEN (thrust, efficiency and new technology) flew on a 787 that it is meant to power.  The 4th 787-8 flight test aircraft ZA004 (LN 004, N7874) flew with the engine for the first time today.  The newest member of the Trent 1000 family is to make up for performance shortfalls in the earlier Trent 1000 engines and is meant to power all three 787 variants with a thrust of up to 78,000 lbs.  According to Rolls Royce, the Trent 1000 TEN "offers proven new technology; its features include a new compressor system scaled from the Trent XWB engine program and a new turbine design to allow extra thrust. Unique to the TEN is a modulated air system which optimizes the secondary air flow within the engine using a valve system with no moving parts, a robust system that delivers performance benefits. External systems have also been improved and re-designed."

The engine should be certified for use on the 787-10 before the types first flight early next year.  Speaking of the 787-10, While parts for the first aircraft are in position 0 in Charleston, it won't start final assembly in position 1 until Dec. 13th, next Tuesday.  Other parts are en-route to Charleston, namely the section 41 forward fuselage.

Lastly, there was a flurry of 787 deliveries yesterday as Boeing delivered 4 787-9s to customers including British Airways, Hainan Airlines, Aeromexico and Xiamen Airlines which picked up it's 1st of 6 787-9 on order.  Boeing has delivered 6 787s this month so far, 132 this year and 495 since program deliveries began.  ZA674 (LN 513, N793AV) for Avianca is to be delivered on Dec. 20th and will be the 500th 787 delivered to a customer.  This will also be the last delivery in 2016 for Boeing which should end the year with 137 787 deliveries - 35 787-8 and 102 787-9s will have been delivered.  Of the remaining 5 787s to be delivered, 3 have had their customer flight and the other 2 will have their C-1 flights next Tuesday, Dec. 13th.  I expect Boeing to shut down for the holidays around Dec. 23rd.

4 comments:

Daetrin said...

Hi Uresh - thanks for all your hard work to keep us updated. :) Question: Your spreadsheet shows LN16 is on the flightline with a delivery date of 7/2017. LN18 is in 45-12 Bay B with a delivery date of 3/17.

I'm just wondering why if LN18 is to be delivered 4 months earlier than LN16, that LN16 is on the flightline. Does this mean that LN16 will be delivered earlier than LN18 (and the delivery dates will change), that the delivery dates are correct and LN16 will just sit on the tarmac for an extra 4 months, or something else?

Uresh said...

Deliver date is also determined by when the customer is ready to take delivery. Boeing may be finished with it now but the customer
Has to also be ready to take procession

Daetrin said...

Since they are both for Ethiopian one would expect that the LN wouldn't matter, e.g. as long as they take a frame March 2017, would it matter that it's LN16 vs. LN18. Why not take the frame that is ready to go? Unless they are fitted for different route types?

Uresh said...

Ethiopian has to be ready to indicted the aircraft into its fleet. They may not be ready to do so for different reasons.