Lufthansa committed to 747-8, expects more delays

Flight Global has this report about Lufthansa remaining committed to the 747-8I, but that it expects more delays, a knock-on effect from the continuing 787 problems.

787 Line 2 in Charleston: Aviation Week

Aviation Week reports that Boeing has selected North Charleston, SC, as the site for Line 2 for the 787, planning to build the 787-9 there. It’s all speculative if informed reporting. Update: Boeing called to say no decision has been made.

Qantas cancels, defers 787s

It was just announced that Qantas Airways canceled 15 orders for 15 787s and deferred 15 more.

This has nothing to do with this week’s delays. Qantas has been considering its order positions for some time, based on the global economic conditions, and an unhappiness in performance.

787 First Flight delay perspective

Update, June 25:

In the myriad of stories about the new 787 delay is this nugget from an Australian reporter: “The 787-8 is currently around 7.5 tonnes overweight and showing a burn of around 4% more fuel than necessary to meet the performance that Qantas thought it was buying.”

Update, 2:50 PM PDT:

• The delay will be a minimum of 2-3 months.
• The weak points are where the wing box attaches to the fuselage.
• Delamination occurred during the static tests.
• Morgan Stanley now predicts entry-into-service in 2011, slipping from March 2010.
• Boeing stock was off ~7% or ~$2.5bn.
• The impact on suppliers remains uncertain.
• From 6 AM PDT to this update, 1,200 stories appeared on Google News about this delay.
• Today the GAO said the Pentagon should reconsider the Boeing-Bell V-22 program because of poor performance, reliability and excessive costs during the time the tilt-rotor has been on duty in Iraq.
• We learned that the roll-out of the 747-8F has shifted from September to November.

The Wall Street Journal has this humorous lead to its story:

Hold the sake? Boeing Co. and All Nippon Airways Co. managers last week marked a “week of 787 Dreamliner Milestones” by smashing open a ceremonial barrel of the rice spirit.

The hangover set in on Tuesday.

Original Post:

The first flight of the 787 is delayed by several weeks, Boeing announced this morning. The full press release is published in a separate post below. Here is the key part of the press release:

Boeing today announced that first flight of the 787 Dreamliner will be postponed due to a need to reinforce an area within the side-of-body section of the aircraft.

The need was identified during the recent regularly scheduled tests on the full-scale static test airplane. Preliminary analysis indicated that flight test could proceed this month as planned. However, after further testing and consideration of possible modified flight test plans, the decision was made late last week that first flight should instead be postponed until productive flight testing could occur.

Podcast: Paris Air Show, A Look Back

Addison Schonland, Richard Aboulafia and I did a podcast late yesterday, talking about the commercial orders at the Air Show, Airbus, Bombardier, the tanker program, UAVs and last but not least we took bets on whether the first flight of the 787 would happen on June 30. The answers are very interesting in light of this morning’s news.