Big week for the 787-9

Boeing Photo

 

The 787-9 is seen by some observers as the 787 program done right.  Indeed Boeing has applied lessons learned (and there are countless number of lessons) to the stretch of their new airplane.  The results have been excellent as it appears that Boeing has learned from past mistakes of the 787-8.

Boeing Photo

This week the 787-9 passed several milestones on the road to certification, delivery and entry into service.  We saw the rollout of the first production 787-9 for Air New Zealand, ZB003 (LN 169, ZK-NZE) from the Everett paint hangar.  The aircraft was beautiful in ANZ black and white scheme and is easily the best scheme on a 787.  This aircraft, which apparently has its passenger cabin all fitted out, went back into the EMC hangar for more change incorporation work as the FAA signs off on the tests as they are accomplished by the test flight fleet. 

Boeing Photo

Boeing is adding 2 production 787-9 to the test flight program for functionality and reliability testing (F & R) and ETOPs testing.  The last of these two aircraft, which is destined to be delivered to United Airlines in about 3 months time, was rolled out last night on April 8th and is ZB167 (LN 181).  It will do the F & R/ETOPs testing for the GEnx engines and I am guessing that it could start that testing as early the 1st or 2nd week of May. This aircraft has its passenger cabin installed.

The first aircraft to conduct F & R/ETOPs testing is ZB197 (LN 146, JA830A) which is to be delivered to ANA probably sometime this year. This aircraft also has its passenger cabin fitted out. It will conduct the same testing on the Roll Royce engines. It had conducted its B-1 flight today, April 9th and will stage the flight testing from Boeing Field.  I believe that ZB197 should complete its flight test duties sometime around the end of May to early June.

Given these development this past week, it appears that Boeing is well on its way to delivering the 787-9.

Second 787-9 takes flight, Boeing delivers 100th 787 (for real this time)

 

Boeing Photos

Ok so I have to backtrack a little bit.  Last week ZA175 (LN 20, JA821J)for Japan Airlines appeared at the Everett Delivery Center and later in the day Flightaware.com showed a delivery flight planned for that aircraft to Tokyo.  This was, I assumed, the 100^th delivery of a 787 to a customer and I reported it as such. However, the flight plan timed out and a couple of days later the aircraft was towed back to a flightline stall.  Now the aircraft may have been contractually delivered but I am not sure.  Right now it seems that ZA434 for Hainan Airlines (LN 85, B-2730) looks to be the 100^th delivered 787.

Given the high level of interest in the 787 I would have expected that Boeing would have made some comment about the delivery but as of yet there hasn’t been any communication about it even after I’ve made an inquiry about it.  Boeing is being very quiet about this which seems to suggest that there might be some sort of behind the scenes issue with who is the actual recipient of 787 #100 or Boeing is waiting to make a very big splash about it at some later date.

As far as production goes, Boeing is still making very good progress in ramping up the rate in the factory.  November has been slow in terms of production testing after last month’s flurry of flight test activity.  There are still 4 aircraft including the aforementioned ZA175 waiting to be delivered.  Boeing has delivered 2 aircraft through the first 10 days of this month though I still see Boeing able to deliver at least 6 more aircraft this month.  They will have to start moving planes out of the flightline and into customer hands if they’re to increase the rate and avoid have a glut of 787s crowding the Everett and Charleston ramps.  This week will probably be critical in terms of determining the progress in delivering these Dreamliners.  Boeing will need to get a few (about 4) more aircraft up doing their B-1 as well as have the 6 airplanes that have already started production testing flying their customer flights.

Last week ZB002 (LN 133, N789FT), the second 78-9 test aircraft, flew for the first time in a 4 hour and 18 minute test flight.  The following day, ZB001 (LN 126, N789EX) resumed test flights after spending a week at Everett.  No reason was given for the 1 week layover but I suspect it was to fine tune the aircraft and possibly change out some flight test equipment.  ZB021 (LN 139, N789ZB) had its GEnx engines run for the first time and I suspect will join the test flight program sometime around mid-December.  In the meantime, Boeing is continuing production work on the first 787-9.  ZB197 (LN 146) is destined for ANA and will be used for some of the final testing activities that the FAA mandated to be done on a production standard aircraft. I expect that this aircraft should roll out by late November but I don’t expect that it will be needed for any test flights until February at the earliest.  I still expect that the first 787-9 should deliver to Air New Zealand around April, 2014.

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