Thursday, September 25, 2014

787 3rd quarter 2014 report



As the 3rd quarter winds up, Boeing seems to be deferring some deliveries to after September 30th according to sources.  This includes the delivery of ZA006, the first 787-8 test flight aircraft to be sold.  Boeing will be attempting now to try and deliver a total of 9 to 11 787s in September including two 787-9 to ANA and Air New Zealand.  Notable deliveries that are being missed in September include:

1st 787-9 to Virgin Atlantic
1st 787-8 to Avianca

So far production looks to be returning to the normal levels of 10 to 11 aircraft per month.  I am projecting that Boeing should start final assembly on 11 787s this month and roll out 9 aircraft.  If Boeing can deliver 11 787s this month, it will go a long way to reducing the inventory of finished aircraft at Charleston and Everett.  As of today Boeing has delivered 188 aircraft since deliveries began exactly 3 years ago.  Boeing has delivered 74 Dreamliners this year and 5 in September.  The goal is 110 and are thus 36 deliveries short of their goal.  Assuming Boeing can manage 6 more in the last 5 days of September they would then need to average 10 787 deliveries per month in order to meet their goal.

Several deliveries should take place within the next two days including:

787-9 to ANA
787-9 to Air New Zealand
787-8 to Air India

Several others need to take the customer flights prior to delivery:

787-8 to LAN
787-8 to Royal Jordanian (via AerCap)
787-8 to Ethiopian (the last from their order of 10)

Now while Boeing can defer some of these deliveries to October, it will mean a much busier month in order to get caught up.  Resources that would have been devoted to preparing aircraft for their planned delivery in October will now be reallocated to those that have been deferred from September to October.  We'll see how it plays out in the next few days.

In other news, Etihad Airways will be unveiling its new livery on the 787-9 sometime on September 27th.  The livery was seen for the first time today on the airlines first A380.  In my opinion the livery was a dud except for the tail.

Lastly, Japanese aviation investigators reported that they could not find a root cause for the burning battery on the ANA flight on January 16th, 2013 which resulted in an emergency landing in Takamatsu, Japan. It was after this incident that lead to the worldwide grounding of the 787 until Boeing containment system to prevent further thermal runaways from developing into a fire.  Since the 787s returned to the air, there have been no further incidents of fires on the LION batteries.  I expect that the FAA, Boeing and battery maker GS Yuasa will continue their investigation and analysis in order to find a root cause of the thermal runaway.

I'll have a full 3rd quarter round up of the 787 program in early October.

787 Full Production Table

1 comment:

Piotrek_ said...

LN202 ZB198 JA833A is in the EDC:
https://twitter.com/mattcawby/status/515618301322747904/photo/1