Boeing Halts Test Flights of Dreamliner Jet

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/busin ... ?src=busln


By CHRISTOPHER DREW
Published: November 10, 2010Boeing halted test flights on Wednesday of its 787 Dreamliner, a day after an onboard fire forced an emergency landing, reinforcing expectations that the long-awaited plane faces more delays.

Several analysts said they doubted that Boeing, which is counting on the jet to vault past Airbus in total sales, would meet its deadline to deliver the first 787 by next March.

The plane, the first passenger jet made substantially with lightweight carbon composites that are supposed to greatly cut fuel costs, is already running nearly three years late. And given other recent problems with suppliers and a test engine, some analysts said, Boeing might only be able to deliver about two dozen of the planes next year, down from earlier estimates of 40 to 50 or more.

“There will be another delay,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group, an aviation consulting firm in Fairfax, Va.

Even if the problems had not occurred on the test plane, “there would still be another delay,” he said. “There are still too many unknowns.”

Boeing said on Wednesday that it was evaluating what went wrong on the test flight and had suspended other flights.

Company officials said smoke entered the cabin from electronics equipment, forcing the plane to make an emergency landing in Texas. Forty-two engineers and crew members were aboard, and one suffered minor injuries in evacuating by slide.

Boeing has been counting heavily on the Dreamliner, which has attracted more advance orders — about 850 — than any plane in history. Its shares fell more than 3 percent, to about $67 a share, in midday trading on Wednesday.

The plane’s development has been marred by persistent problems with Boeing’s far-flung supply network. Company executives have acknowledged that they farmed out more design and production work than on any previous plane and did not initially keep close enough tabs on suppliers.

But even though they have made an all-out push to meet their latest delivery schedule, more problems have cropped up over the last several months.

A Rolls-Royce engine meant to be used in one of the 787 test planes failed in a test plant in Britain in August, spewing out debris.

Boeing cited that engine problem in saying it would push back delivery of the first Dreamliner from late this year to the middle of the first quarter in 2011. Rolls-Royce has said it is confident it can fix the engine in time to meet that schedule.

Rolls-Royce also said this week that the problem on the engine for Boeing did not seem to be related to the failure last week of another Rolls-Royce engine on an Airbus A380 jumbo jet. That engine jettisoned debris while the plane, operated by Qantas Airways, was in flight.

Boeing has also had to tell suppliers around the world to halt parts deliveries three times this year because Alenia Aeronautica, a unit of Finmeccanica of Italy, could not deliver the 787’s horizontal tails on time. The latest parts hold occurred in late October.

Boeing officials have said that poor workmanship by Alenia and other suppliers forced Boeing to rework many parts, further slowing its production line.

Alenia agreed last week to fix the problems by the end of the year.

Mr. Aboulafia, the Teal Group analyst, said he doubted that Boeing would be ready to deliver the first Dreamliner until the second quarter of 2011.

Robert Spingarn, an analyst at Credit Suisse, said that with all the reworking of parts on the first plane, “the aircraft, at this point, is being hand-built.”

But he also said that Boeing still had so many changes to make on the next 20 to 25 planes that it would be hard pressed to deliver more than 25 to 30 planes next year.