787 picks up speed to first flight

Published 9:19 pm Thursday, May 21, 2009

EVERETT — After a series of embarrassing setbacks, the Boeing Co.’s new 787 jet program is getting its oomph back.

“Momentum is accelerating,” Scott Fancher, chief of Boeing’s 787 program, told investors Thursday at a conference in Washington, D.C.

Moments later, here in Everett, Boeing workers started a 787’s Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines. This marked the first all-electric start for a 787’s engines. Boeing had started the Dreamliner’s engines previously in test facilities.

Troubles with Boeing’s global 787 partner suppliers and its production line have led Boeing to push back the first Dreamliner delivery by nearly two years. However, Boeing officials said Thursday that such glitches have leveled off for the 787, giving them confidence the Dreamliner will make its first flight by the end of June.

In April, Boeing completed factory gauntlet tests on the first 787, allowing the company to “fly” the Dreamliner while on the ground, Fancher said. The tests were so successful that Boeing needed half the time it allotted to complete the tasks, he said.

In the next two weeks, a Boeing 787 will undergo intermediate “gauntlet” tests. The company will run the engines on the first Dreamliner, which is parked on the flight line at Everett’s Paine Field, round-the-clock for seven days, Fancher said. Then additional ground tests and taxiing will be conducted as the company prepares its Dreamliner for first flight.

“Ground test is progressing — and progressing very rapidly,” Fancher said.

Boeing will have eight to nine months to get its 787 through flight testing and obtain certification from the Federal Aviation Administration in order to deliver a Dreamliner to Japan’s All Nippon Airways in the first quarter of 2010.

But Boeing already is far enough along on the first Dreamliner model, 787-8, to move engineers over to the next version, the 787-9. Boeing has more engineers on the 787-9 than it does the 787-8, Fancher said. The company plans on locking in the 787-9’s design by the end of 2009.

Boeing has shaken up its way of managing programs in order to get the 787 back on track, said Jim McNerney, chief executive of the aerospace company.

“The big lesson for us is that while the global business model is sound … no program can stand on its own island,” he said.

Boeing shifted executives, engineers and others from its defense business to the 787. With its global suppliers, the Dreamliner resembles more of a defense program than previous aircraft programs, he said.

Delivering on the 787 remains one of the company’s objectives during the economic downturn, McNerney told investors. The mostly carbon-fiber composite 787 has more than 800 orders, the most Boeing has collected at this point in the program for any commercial jet.

Overall, Boeing is weathering the global recession, taking steps to reduce its work force companywide, McNerney said.

“We are facing pressure on both sides of our business,” he said.

Airlines have scaled back new jet orders because of declines in air travel and their difficulty in securing financing. To encourage sales, Boeing expects to finance about $1 billion in aircraft purchases this year.

On the defense side, Boeing is grappling with cuts to the Pentagon’s budget. The company will compete against duo Northrop Grumman and EADS for an Air Force tanker contract later this year. The contract would give Boeing’s commercial side a boost, too, given that its tanker is based on its Everett-built 767 jet.

Boeing has raised concerns about how awarding the contract to Northrop, which paired with the European parent company of Airbus, for the project would affect the nation’s industrial base.

“Once you do destroy a capability, it’s very difficult to reconstruct,” said Jim Albaugh, who leads Boeing’s defense programs.

The Air Force is expected to start the competition this summer. It is the Pentagon’s third attempt to replace its aging KC-135 fleet.