May 20--Had Boeing's dreams for its game-changing 787 jetliner fulfilled their original promise, media worldwide would have been gathered at Everett this week to witness the delivery of the first 787 Dreamliner to All-Nippon Airways.
Instead, dozens of reporters and photographers, bloggers and aviation writers from around the world got their first candid eyewitness look Monday at an airliner program that has proved to be an embarrassing disappointment for Boeing while remaining a promising possibility.
Dreamliner Vice President Mike Shanahan said he's troubled that 11 months after its worldwide debut at rollout ceremonies, the first 787 remains on the assembly line with dozens of workers crawling over it. They're installing the plane's guts that were missing when the shiny new composite airliner took its first bow last July.
And yet Shanahan, who inherited the troubled program last fall, said he was pleased to report the plane is on track to meet its thrice-revised schedule.
The first plane is due to fly for the first time late this year. The first production jetliner is due for delivery to ANA in next year's third quarter.
"I'm feeling really good about this commitment," Shanahan told reporters.
That first 787 remains parked just inside the massive door of the assembly bay. On that door hangs a banner signed by hundreds of Boeing workers celebrating the plane's July 8, 2007, rollout. That plane then was just a hollow shell with no wiring, plumbing or insulation and held together in many cases with ordinary hardware fasteners, yet Boeing then maintained the plane could be ready to fly in less than two months.
Now, work is focused in the plane's mid-body section. But the wings are finally complete, and the nose and aft sections are nearly so, said Shanahan. The plane's brakes and power system are particularly concerning, but vendors have promised to get those in order, he said.
A critical milestone in the plane's progress, the first time its electrical systems are powered up, still is set to happen before the end of June.
Behind that first plane stand three others, all in various stages of assembly. The second in the line is the so-called static test plane. That plane will be sacrificed to tests to determine whether its body and appendages meet design criteria by bending it and flexing it repeatedly in a test jig.
Two more planes are in line behind it, both destined to be test aircraft. Though both of those planes' major parts came to Boeing more complete than the first, much remains to be done. The cockpit of the third aircraft, for instance, has bundles of wires sprouting where the instrument panel should be.
The seventh plane to be built, destined to be the one delivered first to ANA, still has not yet begun final assembly. At the far end of the assembly line, farthest from the doors, are two major parts of the fifth plane that have critical symbolical value to Shanahan. Those parts are the horizontal stabilizers built by Boeing's Italian partner, Alenia.
Those stabilizers are virtually complete, said the 787 program head. That's the way all the major parts of the 787 were to be delivered, but were not for the first planes. Ultimately, all of Boeing's major partner companies will deliver major assemblies, fuselage sections, wings, landing gear, fairings and so forth stuffed with wiring and hydraulics and ready to be simply bolted together and plugged in.
When that happens, Boeing should be able to put a 787 together in just three days. That plug-and-play assembly won't happen soon, but Boeing is slowly moving in that direction, he said.
The company plans to build about 25 production aircraft next year, down significantly from the original goal of 109 aircraft to be built in 2008 and 2009.
The next larger version of the 787 -- the 787-9 -- will first roll off the line in 2012 with the third version, a shorter-range 787-3 destined for Asian markets, scheduled to debut after the 787-9.
Customers around the world have ordered about 900 of the planes, and Boeing is still unsure when it will fulfill its production promises.
Even as he helps Boeing work through its problems with the 787, Shanahan admits that stability and predictability are still in the future.
"About every half an hour somebody comes into my office and throws a grenade," said Shanahan, somewhat philosophically. "We're learning to work those problems through."
John Gillie: 253-597-8663
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