58 days remaining - can Boeing do it?

Boeing has been maintaining the '4th quarter 2008' target for their 787 first flight ever since the last delay was announced, and also repeated it several times during the IAM strike press conferences.

Now the strike is over, there are 58 days remaining of this year, meaning Boeing has 58 days in which to get Dreamliner 001 into the air to meet their stated target.

Can they do it? Will we see a 787 fly this year?

Just before the IAM strike, Boeing realigned a couple of its schedule targets - the first Dreamliner was scheduled to be 'work complete' on the 31st August and have its first flight as 29th October, but the work completion date was shifted to the 6th October without any strike delay taken into account.

The IAM strike began on the 7th September and concluded on the 1st November - meaning Boeing lost its new work completion deadline as it was pushed back by at least 29 days.

IAM returned to work on the 2nd, but realistically actually returned to production on the 3rd.

That means that, on the basis of a 'one for one' day delay, Boeing is looking to complete Dreamliner 001 in 28 days from now - bringing us to the 1st December 2008 for work completion.

On their last schedule, Boeing was looking at 59 days between work completion and first flight - has this shortened at all? If not, we are looking at first flight well into first quarter 2009.

Lots of variables at work here, but my gut feeling is that we wont see a 787 in the air this year.

Thoughts?

hmm, Dreamliner has been posponed several times now, i know there is some new issues to overcome when a plane uses so much composite as the Dreamliner...

I do hope Boing get's the plane ready, they need to get it ready, or they will be in som serious problems visa Airbus.

I can only say this much. At the Portland location, Boeing's employees are back at work. Taking it slow to start it seems, but very happy to be back, and excited about all of the overtime they will be allowed !!!!

That is all I know for now. Overtime will be allowed at this location until things are looking more caught up, and many excited empoyees are jumping on this.

And the chances of a flight this year have just been dramatically cut - Boeing has confirmed that there are more issues with fasteners (rivets) in several of its 787 airframes.

www.atwonline.com...

Even when I am against anything that has to do with corporate monopolies, I in favor of Boeing getting the job done.

Why? because they are one of the last American companies still in America, providing jobs to American people.

Originally posted by marg6043
Why? because they are one of the last American companies still in America, providing jobs to American people.

I hope your not thinking Boeing aircraft are 100% American?

No, I know everything about Boeing, even the scandals, I am just getting the fact that they are mainly in the US and they employ American workers.

Well, I didnt have to wait very long to get a definitive answer to my question!

Boeing has announced that they wont be getting the 787 into the air in 2008, and declined to speculate on a new first flight date at the same time.

www.flightglobal.com...

Originally posted by Phoebus
hmm, Dreamliner has been posponed several times now, i know there is some new issues to overcome when a plane uses so much composite as the Dreamliner...

Its worth pointing out that none of Boeings issues have had anything to do with the composites they are using, its all been supply chain management issues and build issues - the materials themselves have behaved as expected.

Basically, Boeing are behind because they screwed up the outsourcing.

Many companies employ American workers in the USA, such as BAE, Rolls Royce, EADS etc, even Airbus, but lots of American contributors to message boards seem oblivious to this.

And to the fact that Boeing outsdources huge amounts of work to other countries that could easily be done in the USA. Look at the recent row over the USAF's A-10 upgrade which Boeing won and then promptly sent all the work to Korea.

Originally posted by RichardPrice
Its worth pointing out that none of Boeings issues have had anything to do with the composites they are using

Uhm, did they not have problems in getting the fuselage barrels to behave as expected?

I thought they had found a few voids between lamina in quite a few barrels and had to revise their techniques and production forecasts.

I also thought they had some problems in getting their thermal expansion coefficients right.



Admittedly, that might not be a factor in the initial flight.

So that would be a big fat NO! Just in......

'Boeing says it will delay the first flight of its 787 Dreamliner because of problems with the installation of fasteners on the passenger plane and a just-ended machinists strike.

Yvonne Leach, a Boeing spokeswoman for the Dreamliner program, says Dreamliner's "first flight is not going to be accomplished" in the fourth quarter as planned.

She says the company is assessing the program in light of the fastener problems and a 58-day machinists strike that ended on Sunday (local time) and will announce a new Dreamliner launch timetable when that that process is completed.

Ms Leach says company inspectors found that about 3 per cent of the fasteners used to hold together sections of the four 787 test jets in final assembly at the Boeing plant in Washington, in the United States were incorrectly installed.

She says some of them were spaced too far apart and some were too close on the sections forming the fuselage, the wings, the nose and the tail.

The faulty installations occurred in Boeing's structure suppliers for the program, both in the United States and overseas.'

Excellent timing..... just at the point in the US Presidential Election counting that a result could be confidently predicted (nothing about announcements is ever done in a haphazard way, is it), but it was still noticed.

But like the election outcome, did anyone expect Boeing to meet the 2008 deadline? And like the election the failure will not be their fault - it's obviously the nasty strikers and foreign suppliers who can't manage to get the fasteners in the right place...... what happened to management responsibility?

So at least they can relax for while now that they have not set a new date for FF - they'll fly it when they feel like it and not a moment before and screw the customers!

The Winged Wombat