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Bigger 787 completes first flight as plane delays fade

Bigger 787 completes first flight as plane delays fade

cAircraft ZB001 touched down at Boeing Field near downtown Seattle at 4:18pm local time after cruising for more than five hours over the Pacific Northwest. The jet took off from Paine Field in Everett, Washington, next to the factory where it was built.

The flight gave Chicago-based Boeing its first look at the jet’s performance as the company gains confidence that it has solved the assembly and design snags that left the initial 787 and a redesigned 747 jumbo jet years behind schedule. Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney is weighing a speedup in output beyond a goal of building 10 Dreamliners a month by year’s end.

“The 747-8 and 787-8 were challenging programmes, but we’re applying what we learned through a disciplined management model for development programs,” said Scott Fancher, vice-president and general manager of airplane development. “We’re starting to reap the benefits on programs” such as the 787-9.

Engineers will assess data gathered from the flight to guide them through testing of the 787-9. On Wednesday plane was flown by Boeing pilots Mike Bryan and Randy Neville.

Boeing plans to hand over the first 787-9 to Air New Zealand Ltd by mid-2014, Doug Alder, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail. The planemaker plans to produce three dedicated flight-test planes, and to include two jets configured as production models in later trials, Alder said.

The 787-9 has a list price of $249.5 million and seats 250 to 290 people, 40 more than the 787-8. Boeing stretched the wide-body plane’s composite fuselage by 20 feet (6 metres) to 206 feet in length and redesigned it to be more aerodynamic.

Boeing is extending the range to as much as 8,500 nautical miles (15,750 kilometres), about 300 nautical miles more than the 787-8. Boeing has garnered 936 Dreamliner orders by touting the ability of the twin-engine plane to serve long-haul routes without the expense of a jumbo jet.

The 787-9 is in “that sweet spot from the long-haul perspective,” Ray Conner, president and CEO of Boeing’s commercial aircraft business, said on a company webcast. The new plane offers fuel savings of 20 per cent and “maybe even a little bit better than that” over comparably sized aircraft.

Boeing began factory work on the larger jet on a specific day the company had set 2 ½ years earlier after developing a new system, Fancher said in an interview last month. The process gives it closer control over every aspect of a plane’s development, from isolating potential risks to pacing daily work, he said.