Airlines Begin to Assess Impact of Boeing 787 DelaysDecember 22, 2010
 An electrical fire during a test flight last month forced Boeing to announce its seventh major delay in delivering its 787 airliner. This delay has the three major companies increasingly worried that they may have to reassess their growth plans, which were based upon the 787's projections for greater range at a higher efficiency. Boeing has yet to inform the three airlines—All Nippon Airways, Air New Zealand and United Airlines—when exactly they will receive delivery of the 787s. Although the airlines have been in discussions with Boeing about receiving compensation for late deliveries, the delays are expected to cause shifts in long-term planning and expansion. Each airline this month shared its assessment of the situation with Aviation Week. All Nippon Airways All Nippon Airways, which is the first customer of the 787–8 variant, said that it has contingency plans to manage the delays, but that the airline would suffer if the delivery is pushed back to 2012. All Nippon Airways CEO Shinichiro Ito told Aviation Week that the airline has delayed the retirement of older Airbus A320s and Boeing 767s. The company has also bought several newer 767-300 ERs to help bridge the delivery-time gap. But he notes that this is a temporary measure and cannot “cover everything” that the 787 is supposed to do. Boeing's delays will affect the company's new plans for long-haul flights. Air New Zealand Air New Zealand, which is the first customer for the 787–9 variant, expects the delays on the 787–8 to spill over to its order. The company first expected delivery in late 2010, but now expects delivery in late 2013, according to Aviation Week. “Clearly there is frustration for us in those delays, as it is restricting some of our plans in terms of retiring older aircraft and in terms of some of the new routes we are interested in,” Air New Zealand CEO Rob Fyfe told Aviation Week. One major impact of the delays for Air New Zealand: Instead of phasing out its old 747–400s, it has been forced to buy those planes rather than returning them to its lessor, according to Aviation Week. United Airlines United Airlines, which recently merged with Continental Airlines, was to be the first airline in North America to fly the 787s, but the company now worries that it will lose its competitive advantage in the region because of the delays. With its F-22s Corroding, Attention Focuses on Lockheed’s F-35 A new report by the Government Accountability Office notes that the Defense Department plans to spend $228 million through 2016 to fix corrosion on its F-22 fighter jets, according to an article by Bloomberg News. Corrosion is a major problem across all of the Department of Defense's weapon systems, costing the agency about $21 billion annually, according to the report. But the problem with Lockheed Martin's F-22 jets will have to be watched carefully because the same company is manufacturing the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most advanced and most expensive Pentagon program. “Corrosion of the aluminum skin panels was first observed in spring 2005, less than six months” after the F-22 were first deployed, according to the GAO report. Within the first two years, there were more than 534 cases and “corrosion in the substructure was becoming prevalent.” Lockheed Martin is performing joint testing between F-22 and F-35 programs to avoid similar corrosion on the new F-35 fighter jets now in development, a company spokesman told Bloomberg News. The spokesman said the F-22 jets “indicated corrosion issues resulting from interaction” with the stealth material the aircraft uses to evade enemy radar. He added that the company has developed another material that “eliminated that interaction." Starting early next year, the new material will replace the problematic material on the existing F-22 fleet, he told Bloomberg News. The GAO report points out that the F-35 has improved drain holes to allow moisture to escape while the drain holes on the F-22 were too small to allow proper water drainage. (U.S. Air Force photo/Samuel King Jr.) |
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