Boeing is in the midst of a three-week halt in structural deliveries from its 787 suppliers, the fourth such stoppage this year, the company confirms.
The airframer says the delivery hold began “late last month” when it “initiated a roughly 16-[manufacturing] day adjustment to the loading of new airplanes into final-body join.”
Boeing works on a five manufacturing day week, with approximately 22 manufacturing days in each calendar month.
Structural sections for Airplane 30, an aircraft for Air India, have been loaded into position one for final body join inside the 787 final assembly line. Program sources say all sections for Airplane 31, a 787 for All Nippon Airways, have arrived company’s Everett, Washington facility, except the North Charleston, South Carolina integrated center fuselage.
Boeing initiated its first hold in April to allow design changes to take effect on later airframes, followed by a second in September, and a third in October to eliminate horizontal stabilizer workmanship issues from traveling to final assembly from Alenia Aeronautica in Italy.
The company attributes the latest hold to ensuring “the entire production system flows as design and to minimize adverse impacts to final assembly.”
Boeing did not offer any additional details about what it needed to halt in order to avoid the “adverse impacts” to its final assembly process.
While flight test operations remain halted as the company determines a new master schedule for first delivery to ANA and develops software and hardware fixes to the 787’s power distribution system.
Boeing was forced to halt all flight test operations following fire aboard test aircraft ZA002 while it was on approach to Laredo, Texas on November 9.
The company emphasizes: “We are not asking partners to slow or stop production.”
However, while Boeing has not finalized its latest production schedule, forward fuselage, pylon and wing fixed leading edge supplier, Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems, has moved most of its 787 staff to other programs, seeking manage its own pace of production against the rate of deliveries to final assembly.
The shift may provide an important barometer for the pace the supplier has completed its shipsets, but also may indicate the implementation of a slower production ramp up is in the offing.
Continental Airlines, now merged with United Airlines, has postponed plans to initiate its Houston to Auckland, New Zealand 787 service from October 2011 to sometime in 2012 pending a new delivery schedule from Boeing.
The company currently aims to build ten 787s per month by the end of 2013.
Boeing has 24 787s in various stages of assembly inside its factory and on the flight line, some in extended storage.
A new schedule is expected in “several weeks”, says Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Jim Albaugh.
Today’s plan calls for first handover to ANA in mid-first quarter 2011, a date that is estimated to slip anywhere from three to six months, say industry analysts.
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This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.