Boeing ready to deliver first long-delayed Dreamliners to Japan

Boeing 787 taking off on test flight in 2009: Boeing is counting on a rapidly growing market in China for sales of its long-delayed Dreamliner.

Hard on the heels of the announcement that Boeing had at long last received regulatory approval to begin delivering its new plastic-based 787 Dreamliner, there has been another cancelation, this one by Monarch Airlines of the UK. The company had ordered six of the aircraft, which had been scheduled for delivery in 2010, but has now confirmed that it will not be buying any of them. This follows a string of cancelations for the much-delayed airliner.

However, Boeing has 827 orders on the books for the $185 million plane which "pushed technology," according to Boeing Commercial Airplanes Chief Executive Jim Albaugh. With droll understatement he admitted that "This airplane is a little late." The aircraft is about three years behind its original schedule, and billions of dollars over budget.

The first deliveries to customers who have stuck with the company will take place on September 28 when the first Dreamliner arrives at Tokyo's Haneda airport for All Nippon Airways. The company now expects to produce ten of the planes per month by the end of 2013. 

Boeing claims that the light-weight carbon fiber composites used in building the 787 airframe will help lower fuel costs by 20 per cent. The composites also allow more comfortable cabin pressure and larger windows. But it is the newness of the materials and the manufacturing processes, which extended the testing period to twenty months, that contributed to the lengthy delays in delivering a final product. Approximately half of Boeing's inventory of 787s had already been built when a fire last year on a test flight caused them to push back delivery yet again. This means that the dozens of planes now sitting on runways, each in a different state of readiness, will still need months of work to complete. According to one analyst, Boeing has a 787 Dreamliner inventory worth $16 billion.

Boeing is counting on the rapidly expanding civil aviation market in China to be a mainstay of its sales of the 787. China is forecast to need 5,000 new commercial aircraft by 2030, and Boeing expects that its 787 will fill up to 40 per cent of that growing need.