Even after the Boeing Co. delivers its first Dreamliner, expected by the end of September, the company still will have plenty of 787s parked around Paine Field for the foreseeable future.
That’s because, by then, Boeing will have built at least 35 787s that will need additional care before de
livery. Those aircraft were built before Boeing discovered problems during 787 testing. Much of that extra work will take place inside a leased hangar at Paine Field in Everett.
There’s enough work to get 787s ready for delivery that Boeing will need the extra space at Paine Field through the end of 2012, Boeing’s chief executive Jim McNerney said last week during the company’s earnings call.
The hangar, leased from Aviation Technical Services, a maintenance, repair and overhaul company, can hold up to five 787s. The fifth entered the hangar last week, Scott Fancher, general manager for the 787 program, said in an interview.
“Every one of these airplanes has a different work statement,” Fancher said.
The earliest built 787 have the most work to be done while Boeing incorporated some of the changes it made during testing into the production of newly built Dreamliners. Older aircraft will require more extensive wiring changes, new software and some structural changes. Workers in the leased hangar also will complete some of the interior work, Fancher said.
McNerney reiterated the company’s plan to deliver as many as 20 787s this year. However, those jets will be a mix of freshly built 787s that need little rework and older ones that Boeing’s already working on inside the ATS hangar.
The leased hangar at Paine Field isn’t the only site where Boeing’s doing some of what it calls change incorporation work on the already built 787s. The company plans to work on six 787s at its site in San Antonio, Texas. One Dreamliner already is there.
Inside its Everett factory, Boeing workers are using the space that will soon become a 787 surge line to prepare planes to go to the ATS facility. After Boeing picked South Carolina as home to a second 787 line, the company said it would establish a surge line in Everett until the North Charleston facility was up to speed. They’ve hinted lately that the surge line would likely be permanent.
Typically, Boeing does change incorporation work out on the field, not inside the factory or in a rented hangar, Fancher said. But the numerous delays Boeing has experienced with the 787 has meant Boeing has more planes on hand than what’s typical for the jet maker. Fancher said that there’s no shortage of second-guessing of the 787 program.
“Fundamentally, I think (Boeing) has made the best decisions possible,” he said.
Shutting down production until Boeing worked out all the issues in flight testing wasn’t really an option.
“If you don’t build, you idle all of production,” said Scott Hamilton, a local analyst with Leeham Corp. “You can’t underestimate … the learning curve in production.”
Still, the learning curve has been costly: thousands of extra hours of labor; late payments to 787 customers; the leased hangar; the $75,000 monthly charge for parking extra jets at Paine Field. Hamilton doubts Boeing will ever disclose how much the delays have cost the company.
After the first 787 is delivered, Boeing will give an estimate about when the 787 program is expected to be profitable. The low-range of estimates is about 800 airplanes, Hamilton said. But International Lease Finance Corp. founder Steven Udvar-Hazy, who started the new leasing firm Air Lease Corp., put the break-even figure as high as 1,500 airplanes.
“This has been a disastrous program in terms of execution,” Hamilton said. “But Boeing will be a stronger company for it.”
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