Just when it looked as if Boeing was about to follow the delivery of the first 787s to All Nippon with a smooth transition to the most recently announced ongoing delivery schedule leading reasonably quickly to full scale uninterrupted production , another hiccup has rolled in.
The manufacturer has now announced a hold of around a month on the final assembly line. (ATI news 12/07).
It is not clear in which order aircraft currently on the line and those parked outside for further pre-delivery work will actually be delivered to the airlines but Ethiopian appear to be indicating a slippage of about three months to its "early 2012" aircraft. The issue of who gets what and when is more complex than just getting aircraft away from Everett as quickly as possible. The timing and order of deliveries also affects the competitive position of one customer vis-a-via another. Whereas until the programe slipped an early customer may have expected to have say two years advantage over a later purchaser ,a reshuffling can close this gap and reduce or even eliminate that advantage altogether with considerable financial consequences. Strategies of route, frequency, capacity or product and brand improvement can be totally thrown into disarray. The frowns therefore go much deeper than being just about the length of delay to delivery.
Hopefully this will be the last production problem, but on past record there will be a lot of crossed fingers,- and some legs.
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