Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 19. April 25, 2025
- How good is the C929? Part 2. April 24, 2025
- Boeing First Quarter Results Update: China is 10% of the backlog, with 500 in “Unidentified” April 24, 2025
- Boeing First Quarter Results: Tariffs, Return flights, $10.55bn asset sale April 23, 2025
- RTX Q1 2025 Earnings: GTF Talk Takes A Back Seat To Tariffs April 22, 2025
Random Thoughts, July 6
Here is another in our occasional stream of random thoughts.
Bill Virgin and Manufacturing Alert
Bill Virgin, a former columnist with The Seattle PI, was zapped when the print edition shut down and it became a web-only publication. He’s launched his own newsletter, Manufacturing Alert, which covers a variety of industries and issues in Washington State. The modestly-priced subscription-only newsletter may be found here. His June 22 issue notes there are now at least five aerospace groups in Washington dedicated to keeping Boeing here and encouraging aerospace in the state. These are the following groups (with our additional comment describing the mission of each):
Too soon to draw conclusions for 2010 funding
Here’s an item we wrote last week for for Commercial Aviation Online:
Boeing Capital Corp. (BCC) isn’t worried about global customer funding availability in 2010, but a top official also says it’s too soon to be sanguine.
Kostya Zolotusky, managing director, said that at the mid-year point today, BCC has “better visibility” for 2010 but that the tight credit market means deals that are normally arranged six months in advance now get arranged in shorter periods.
First report on AF447
This BBC story is a good one on the first French analysis of the crash of Air France 447. Most surprising is that the investigators believe the A330-200 was intact when it hit the water in what sounds like a more-or-less level position, on its belly. Earlier reports suggested the plane broke apart in the air.
Customers to watch on production trends
Here is a piece we did for Commercial Aviation Online:
The debate continues whether production rates on the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 families should be reduced.
Both manufacturers are in a tug-of-war with their supply chain over rates should be reduced in 2010 and aerospace analysts seem ignored by the Big Two airframers.
Random Thoughts/Update, Good bye Line 2
Update, 9:20 AM: Flightblogger just posted this: Boeing to buy Vought, Line 2 to go there. This is step one in the allusion below to big news coming out of Boeing that affects Puget Sound.
Original Post:
ANA and the 787
All Nippon Airways, launch customer of the much-delayed Boeing 787, upped its orders from 50 to 55. We can’t help but wonder if it’s going to pay anything at all for these five airplanes or whether these will be free for compensation.
Big news out of Boeing coming?
Here in the Puget Sound we are hearing a lot of buzz that there will be big news out of Boeing’s HQ in Chicago as early as Friday that will be of more than passing interest here. We’ve had three sources on this one.
Lufthansa committed to 747-8, expects more delays
Flight Global has this report about Lufthansa remaining committed to the 747-8I, but that it expects more delays, a knock-on effect from the continuing 787 problems.
787 Line 2 in Charleston: Aviation Week
Aviation Week reports that Boeing has selected North Charleston, SC, as the site for Line 2 for the 787, planning to build the 787-9 there. It’s all speculative if informed reporting. Update: Boeing called to say no decision has been made.
Qantas cancels, defers 787s
It was just announced that Qantas Airways canceled 15 orders for 15 787s and deferred 15 more.
This has nothing to do with this week’s delays. Qantas has been considering its order positions for some time, based on the global economic conditions, and an unhappiness in performance.
787 First Flight delay perspective
Update, June 25:
In the myriad of stories about the new 787 delay is this nugget from an Australian reporter: “The 787-8 is currently around 7.5 tonnes overweight and showing a burn of around 4% more fuel than necessary to meet the performance that Qantas thought it was buying.”
Update, 2:50 PM PDT:
- The delay will be a minimum of 2-3 months.
- The weak points are where the wing box attaches to the fuselage.
- Delamination occurred during the static tests.
- Morgan Stanley now predicts entry-into-service in 2011, slipping from March 2010.
- Boeing stock was off ~7% or ~$2.5bn.
- The impact on suppliers remains uncertain.
- From 6 AM PDT to this update, 1,200 stories appeared on Google News about this delay.
- Today the GAO said the Pentagon should reconsider the Boeing-Bell V-22 program because of poor performance, reliability and excessive costs during the time the tilt-rotor has been on duty in Iraq.
- We learned that the roll-out of the 747-8F has shifted from September to November.
The Wall Street Journal has this humorous lead to its story:
Hold the sake? Boeing Co. and All Nippon Airways Co. managers last week marked a “week of 787 Dreamliner Milestones” by smashing open a ceremonial barrel of the rice spirit.
The hangover set in on Tuesday.
Original Post:
The first flight of the 787 is delayed by several weeks, Boeing announced this morning. The full press release is published in a separate post below. Here is the key part of the press release:
Boeing today announced that first flight of the 787 Dreamliner will be postponed due to a need to reinforce an area within the side-of-body section of the aircraft.
The need was identified during the recent regularly scheduled tests on the full-scale static test airplane. Preliminary analysis indicated that flight test could proceed this month as planned. However, after further testing and consideration of possible modified flight test plans, the decision was made late last week that first flight should instead be postponed until productive flight testing could occur.
Podcast: Paris Air Show, A Look Back
Addison Schonland, Richard Aboulafia and I did a podcast late yesterday, talking about the commercial orders at the Air Show, Airbus, Bombardier, the tanker program, UAVs and last but not least we took bets on whether the first flight of the 787 would happen on June 30. The answers are very interesting in light of this morning’s news.