06 November 2008

Dreamliner nightmare for Boeing?

SINGAPORE - How bad are the delays on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and how badly will they skew the plans of airlines which have ordered the plane?

Boeing blamed the latest delay on a 58-day machinistsÃ¢â¬â¢ strike and problems with the installation of fasteners that hold the aircraft together.

The news will be a blow to the airlines with orders for the aircraft, which include British Airways, Virgin, TUI, Monarch, Qantas and Air New Zealand.

Writing for Crikey.com in Australia, Ben Sandilands says about three per cent of the metal fasteners used to link some sections of the four incomplete test flight planes have been affected.

Ã¢â¬ÅâœThey will have to be Ã¢â¬ËœunscrewedÃ¢â¬â¢, which is not something easily done to a composite jet comprising many criss-crossing layers of glued and oven baked reinforced carbon fibre,Ã¢â¬~ said Sandilands.

Ã¢â¬ÅâœRemoving the Ã¢â¬ËœfastenersÃ¢â¬â¢, as Boeing calls them, involves drilling them out of the structure. They are supposed to stay in place forever. The process can damage and weaken the panels involved.

Ã¢â¬ÅâœThis means the original Dreamliner 1, that Boeing falsely claimed could fly as early at late September 2007, will now be unscrewed and rescrewed at least twice, the first time being after the sham rollout on July 8, 2007, where it had been deliberately cobbled together with the wrong screws to meet a public relations deadline.

Ã¢â¬ÅâœBoeing now has no first flight date, nor first customer delivery date for the 787, pending what is described as a full assessment of the program,Ã¢â¬~ Sandilands added.