EVERETT The day after the Boeing Co. delivered the bad news, the delay of flight testing for its Dreamliner, the company shared some good news.
The company recently tested the might of the 787’s fuselage, dropping the mostly carbon fiber composite barrel from 15 feet. The results confirm Boeing’s computer simulations, meaning one less potential hiccup the company could face in bringing the Dreamliner to market next year. Boeing won’t disclose further details of the testing.
Additionally on Thursday, Boeing announced it has added 78 commercial jet orders to its backlog in the past week, including a $3.8 billion request from China Southern Airlines for 55 Renton-built 737s. The single week total of 78 orders exceeds the number of new requests Boeing logged in the month of August, bringing its 2007 tally to 841 orders.
“Boeing and China Southern Airlines have been working together for nearly two decades,” said Rob Laird, Boeing’s vice president of sales in China, in a press statement. “China’s aviation future is very strong and we believe the Boeing 737 family will continue to play a pivotal role in the development of its domestic networks.”
Boeing also cranked up aircraft deliveries in August to 42, its highest level this year. With 295 commercial jets delivered in the first eight months of 2007, Boeing remains on track to meet its goal of delivering 440 to 445 commercial jets.
The news of Boeing’s fuselage drop-testing comes one day after the company disclosed that it had pushed back the Dreamliner’s first flight by as much as four months. The 787 won’t fly until mid-November to mid-December, a scheduling setback that forces Boeing to run its flight test program round the clock to meet its first delivery in May 2008.
Even Boeing’s vice president of the 787 program, Mike Bair, admitted the delay leaves Boeing with little wiggle room should additional problems occur.
“The real worry is if we find something in flight test,” Bair said. “We’re rapidly running out of time to deal with something big.”
In its effort to certify the 787 with the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing dropped a 10-foot-long fuselage section at its Apache helicopter manufacturing plant in Mesa, Ariz., last month. The test was designed to simulate the vertical impact of an emergency landing on essentially flat terrain not a full-tilt crash. Because results matched what Boeing’s engineers had predicted, the company can model various crash scenarios using computational analysis rather than performing more physical tests on actual pieces of the plane, Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter said.
On Wednesday, Wall Street barely batted an eye at Boeing’s announced flight test delay, demonstrating confidence the company would meet, or come close to meeting, its first delivery to Japan’s All Nippon Airways next year. On Thursday, Boeing’s stock rose 36 cents to close at $96.20. That’s up more than $24 from its 52-week low of $72.13, which occurred just shy of a year ago on Sept. 11, 2006.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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