Boeing 787 Dreamliner launches three years late

Boeing 787 Dreamliners, for now the world’s coolest planes, are rolling off the assembly line more than three years late, a delay that risks a dogfight with archrival Airbus. This was the jetliner the planet was going to build, producing pieces in the world’s far corners for seamless U.S. assembly. Boeing managers parceled out work to countries likely to buy the plane, letting Japan make wings, China build rudders, Italy supply fuselage sections and France furnish wheels and brakes.

They said the twin-engine widebody with 210 seats initially would revolutionize air travel, using a lightweight carbon-composite skin to save fuel and enable larger windows and a more pressurized and humidified cabin. Boeing promised better air filtration, a smoother ride and spacious overhead luggage compartments.

The Dreamliner may well deliver on the flight improvements. But as more than 800 orders for the $185 million plane piled up from airlines, the ambitious high-tech advances and far-flung manufacturing process caused world-class headaches. The delays gave Airbus time to develop its A350, a carbon-composite plane the Europeans claim will carry more passengers, fly farther and burn less fuel than the Dreamliner.

“The A350 is going to be a whale of a competitor,” said analyst Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group in Evergreen, Colo. “If Boeing could have brought out the 787 three years ago like they were supposed to, it really could have hurt Airbus.”

Even Boeing managers, whose predecessors were cavalier about the Dreamliner’s challenges, say the company will reevaluate offshoring strategies for future planes. Yet Boeing’s bacon may be saved by massive overall demand for jetliners.

Boeing expects a $4 trillion world market for new aircraft over the next 20 years. Airlines must replace aging fleets. China and other emerging nations are expanding aviation. And most importantly, carriers need fuel-efficient planes.

So Boeing is boosting commercial aircraft production by 40 percent over the next three years.
The Dreamliner is designed to consume 20 percent less fuel than the similarly sized Boeing 767. Boeing, based in Chicago with its largest manufacturing operations in Puget Sound, designed the Dreamliner as a smaller twinjet as opposed to its 747, which carries more than 400 passengers in some configurations.

The switch is hugely significant, because the smaller, more efficient 787 challenges the hub-and-spoke pattern of conventional flying. Commercial airlines could use the Dreamliner to shift toward point-to-point flights, boosting midsize airports such as Portland International Airport, which would offer more nonstop routes to domestic and international destinations.

As Boeing developed the smaller Dreamliner, Airbus initially concentrated on its A380, the world’s largest passenger airliner, which entered service in 2007. The $300 million double-deck Superjumbo can carry more than 800 passengers and fly nonstop from Hong Kong to New York.

But as the economics of the business changed, the competition between the Dreamliner and the A350 heated up. Airbus has booked more than 560 orders at prices between $236 million and $300 million for the 350, whose scheduled launch is slipping later into 2013. Boeing has more than 820 orders for the Dreamliner.

Boeing managers insist they have the upper hand, maintaining the 787 has superior technology.
“It’s lighter, more technologically advanced, has a lower fuel burn, lower maintenance costs, lower airport fees and significantly lower operating costs than the competition,” said Jennifer Cram, a Boeing spokeswoman. “Clearly, having an airplane that will soon be in operation and proven in the market puts us in the perfect position.”

‘No shortage of challenges’

Reporters on a tour of the gigantic hangar housing the Everett assembly line earlier this year encountered Justin Hale, the 787 project’s chief mechanic, standing on the viewing balcony. Below, workers swarmed around jets in various stages of production.

Hale acknowledged the sprawling production network and the ambitious advances caused problems.
“There just has been no shortage of challenges along the way,” Hale said. “It’s different in so many ways from any other airplane we’ve ever done.”

Everett workers are producing two 787s a month. They plan to reach 10 a month by late 2013, split between Everett and North Charleston, S.C. The company is also boosting production of the Boeing 777. It’s cranking out 747-8s, both as freighters and passenger jets.

Hale, who now markets the plane, said its complexity holds both peril and promise.
Boeing confirmed Monday, for example, that it’s suspending final assembly of the 787 in Everett for about 20 days to address supply-chain issues. The National Labor Relations Board continues to pursue a complaint against Boeing for allegedly retaliating illegally against its largest union when it decided in 2009 to put a second Dreamliner assembly line in a nonunion South Carolina plant.

Hale said carbon-fiber composites, which replace aluminum, account for about half the weight of each 787. The light, strong fuselage material is what cuts fuel consumption and enables larger window cutouts, increased cabin pressure and higher humidity. Fuselage panels are produced in tubes, not panels as in previous aircraft, changing the way the long-range plane is made and how it flies.

“The wing is a different shape than we’ve ever built before,” Hale said. “It helps us achieve more lift with less drag.” A traditional metal wing could not deliver that performance, he said.
Hale’s excitement about the plane is palpable. “It’s humidified to a higher level. That helps prevent sinuses from drying out. Gaseous filtration removes food odors, people odors, things like perfumes, evaporated alcohols and all those things that irritate sinuses.”

Outsourcing added costs

Such technological innovation was a tall order on top of Boeing’s far-flung manufacturing operation. Earlier this year, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Chief Jim Albaugh acknowledged during a Seattle talk that the attempt to cut costs through global outsourcing backfired.

“We spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we’d tried to keep the key technologies closer to home,” Albaugh said. Boeing had to support, compensate or buy out some manufacturing partners to rescue the process.

Two New York professors studied Boeing’s outsourcing and concluded that the company had handed out tricks of the trade that would sharpen the competitiveness of Japan, which aims to enter the aircraft manufacturing business.

“This does not bode well for the Western aerospace sector,” wrote David Pritchard and Alan MacPherson, “since the Japanese government has recently funded a research program to produce a regional jet aircraft.”

Boeing’s Hale responded that the technology stream has often flowed in reverse, as Boeing benefits from innovation by its suppliers. But he granted that glitches in the sprawling manufacturing network would force reassessment.

“The challenges in our production system have absolutely given us cause to go back and see if this is the right business model,” Hale said. “Where it’s warranted, we’ll make adjustments.”

Yet the fundamental trend of using foreign suppliers isn’t apt to change.

“There are certainly countries where it’s important for them to have a piece of the pie,” Hale said. “They may not ever consider purchasing a Boeing airplane if we’re not interested in the economy of their country.”

In Japan on Tuesday, crews flying a Dreamliner jet completed a week of tests designed to simulate operating conditions. Sometime in August or September, Boeing plans to make its first commercial delivery of a 787, to Japan’s All Nippon Airways Co., which has ordered 55 Dreamliners.

Welcoming the test plane to Japan this month, All Nippon Chief Executive Shinichiro Ito quoted a Japanese proverb: “A child who is born from a difficult delivery is tenfold more loved.”

Richard Read http://www.oregonlive.com