This day deserves a round up of all the Boeing news that is currently making me cross-eyed.
Boeing and the IAM are cited as one of four causes for economic slowdown in the US by the White House:
“Today’s G.D.P. report is weak, but it is not unexpected,” a White
House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino. “A number of things contributed to
the slowing economy in the third quarter — record high energy prices,
housing and credit concerns, two major hurricanes and a prolonged Boeing strike.“
Boeing released a podcast this afternoon (props to TBC on the new media!) and made some significant news with its content. MIke Denton, VP of Engineering says that Boeing is insourcing significant detailed design work for 787-9.
One of the really important things that our teams need to know is that we have learned as a management team from the lessons of the 787-8. so the way we do the -9 in terms of how the design work is shared between partners and the Boeing company will be revised.
So the end result of that is that we had a fair bit of incomplete build and incomplete design and a lot of traveled work that came to our factories here in Everett Washington. And our engineers and production workers are basically correcting the problems that should have never come to us in the first place. Problems that are the result of the partners really not being done. That’s really unfortunate.
We will do more of the detailed design work on the 787-9 than we did on
the -8. We are working out those details with some of our affected
partners now. For the next new airplane and the bright future is there
will be a next new airplane we will look at how the partner model went
on the 787.
The podcast itself is a significant mea culpa on the issues with the 787 program in acknowledging what went wrong and where. Though the biggest play is to throw a significant carrot to SPEEA whose biggest grievance has been the continued outsouring of engineering work to risk sharing partners and engineering centers outside the US.
READ THE FULL PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Shot:
Denton: The challenges for SPEEA and our working with them is that — just as we have new leaders in the Boeing side in Doug Kight and Tom Easley — the SPEAA team is represented by a new executive director. So part of successful negotiation is establishing a good working relationship. So right now we are in the process of developing that relationship and defining the new norms for how we’ll do our negotiating.
Chaser:
From @SPEEA at 6:46 PM ET 10/30: SPEEA ends today’s meeting early citing Boeing intransigence
ATW reports today that Jetstar is expecting an additional six-month delay on getting its first 787.
QANTAS’ low cost arm is expecting Ship 21 in November 2009, but that, according to the airline, appears unlikely. An additional six month slip for early customers could put the first delivery to ANA as far out as February 2010, assuming August 15, 2009 as the current delivery date.
Jetstar Airways executives told ATWOnline this week that the LCC’s first 787 is not expected until May 2010, 21 months later than the original schedule. A spokesperson added, “Based on what we have been told, we are working on contingencies and planning for a further three-to-six-month delay in our delivery, although Boeing is yet to formally confirm that.” The lag is far longer than the 54-day IAM strike and confirms ATWOnline’s report last month that there has been further slippage in the program, possibly due to brake control issues.
Also, Ethiopian news site Nazret.com cites a Reuters report from Addis Ababa that Ethiopian Airlines is expecting its first 787 by the end of next year:
It already has 10 Boeing Co 787 aircraft on order, the first of which
is now due to be delivered in December 2009, after supply chain
problems delayed the programme by at least 16 months. The airline is
looking to order more Boeing 787 aircrafts or order Airbus A350 XWB.
A picture begins to emerge of the (existing) 2009 delivery schedule for the first 25 units based on published reports. These targets are all likely to slip in to 2010.
ANA – ZA007 – August 2009
JAL – ZA020 – October 2009
Jetstar – ZA021 – November 2009
Air India – ZA025 – November 2009
Ethiopian – ZA026 – December 2009
And finally this from Flight:
Boeing’s finance unit may raise a $5 billion warchest that could be
used to buy aircraft for leasing, to make loans to customers or to fund
acquisitions of other businesses.
The most likely use of these funds would be for financing aircraft purchases in the year to come.
If we stretch the speculative imagination a bit, these same funds could be used to buy out Alenia on the 2nd half of Global Aeronautica in Charleston. There are loud rumblings that an acquisition could provide Boeing additional stability for the 787 production ramp up. The first 50% from Vought cost about $47 million. $5B would easily cover the remaining 50%. What about expansion of San Antonio? After all there was this item from yesterday’s Seattle Times:
[The new IAM contract] gives the union a new right to bid for work being considered for transfer to a nonunion Boeing facility.
This could become important if, say, Boeing decided it wanted to
move more 787 work to San Antonio, Texas — a nonunion location already
assigned to do any necessary changes on some of the early production
airplanes.
Thoughts?
This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.
This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.