787 Encounters Setback

In a report by my colleague, Geoffrey Thomas at ATWOnline, he notes that the 787 has encountered a  setback in its quest to take to the skies, with Boeing Commercial Airplanes seemingly only just recovered from the IAM strike that crippled production for two months.

The full story can be found here.

“Boeing recently discovered some fasteners on the 787 airplanes in Everett were incorrectly installed and do not conform to specifications.  The fasteners themselves were fine.  We alerted our structural and pre-integration partners to also inspect the units they have in production.  Some partners did find some installation non-conformances as well.

Less than 3 percent of fasteners installed to date are non-conforming.  We’ll remove and replace all of them.  Boeing will replace the fasteners on airplanes in Everett and the partners who found non-conformances will do the work at their home locations prior to shipment.

We will not know the full impact of this on our schedule until 787 production fully resumes and we complete our strike recovery assessment.  We do not yet have a date for the completion of the assessment,” said  company spokeswoman Mary Hanson in a statement released today.

Image courtesy of Boeing

Given that the 787 Dreamliner uses a unique, monolithic composite fuselage structure, the overall number of fasteners on the airplane is greatly reduced compared to traditionally built airplanes.

Back in July, the fourth test 787 fuselage was damaged at an assembly plant in South Carolina when wrong fasteners were installed.

With much of the first 787 essentially having arrived at Everett without any systems installed, this first example has taken longer to assemble and complete than subsequent 787’s arriving into the factory.

It is hoped that as production gets into full swing over the coming weeks and months that the delivery of additional sections will be easier to integrate and avoid travelled work which has hampered the first few 787’s which will take part in the certification programme.

It is now widely accepted that first flight will likely take place in 2009 given the day-for-day slippage due to the IAM strike and that deliveries will commence in early 2010.

7 comments November 4th, 2008