Story ID: GP777xdelay04272022
Boeing Puts Positive Spin on 777X Delay
By: Gregory Polek
Caption: Delay of first delivery of the 777-9 until 2025 reflects a position of “strength, not weakness,” according to Boeing CEO David Calhoun.
Word Count: 645
Boeing CEO David Calhoun on Wednesday characterized the most recent setback suffered by the 777X program resulting in a delay of first delivery of the 777-9 until 2025 as a reflection of the company’s “position of strength, not weakness.” Speaking during the company’s first-quarter earnings call, Calhoun explained that the delay and pause of 777-9 production through 2022—for which it expects to incur additional costs totaling $1.5 billion—did not reflect any deficiency in the company’s engineering organization or any shortfall in engineers, but rather from a reassessment of time the company would need to meet the FAA’s stricter certification requirements.

Originally scheduled for certification in 2020, the 777X has accumulated 2,000 flight test hours. However, the 777X has encountered more than one major hurdle on its way to first delivery, most notably more thorough oversight from regulators resulting from investigations into the two fatal crashes of the 737 Max in October 2018 and March 2019. 

“We’ve embedded every lesson that we’ve learned on the 737 Max certifications, and we continue to have two of those ahead of us, we’ve applied all the lessons from the 787 [certification]…and believe that we’ve got to give ourselves the time and the freedom to get this right for the FAA,” said Calhoun. “It also, by calling it out now, gives us the opportunity to trade some capacity for our traditional metal-wing 777 Freighter, which right now is in incredibly high demand. And then finally, with the 777-8 Freighter, which we introduced with Qatar, is a very big deal with respect to the long-term ramifications to the 777 family in the decades ahead.”

The confirmation of the 777X delay comes as the company reallocates resources to re-certification for resumption of delivery of 787s, accelerating deliveries of 737 Max jets, and type certification of the 737 Max 10 by year-end. Calhoun reported that Boeing submitted the certification paperwork package for the 787 program to the FAA during the past week. Last week Reuters reported that Boeing has told customers it will resume delivering 787s in the second half of this year.

In a statement, Boeing said it has completed re-work on the initial 787s affected by the delivery halt and that it continues to work closely with the FAA on the timing of resuming deliveries. It added that the program continues to produce airplanes “at a very low rate” and will continue to do so until deliveries resume. While the company plans for a gradual return to a production rate of five airplanes per month “over time,” it also anticipates 787 abnormal costs of some $2 billion, most of which it expects to incur by the end of 2023, including $312 million recorded in the first quarter of this year.

Boeing halted Dreamliner shipments late in 2020 and eventually managed to deliver two by the end of the first quarter of 2021. It delivered another 12 through late May when it again had to suspend shipments due to an FAA request for further documentation related to quality problems.

In September of 2020, Boeing found that mechanics clamped together certain components in the horizontal stabilizer with greater force than required by engineering specifications, resulting in possible improper gap verification or shimming as workers assembled the component. That issue further slowed deliveries as the company performed special inspections to address imperfections in fuselage skins and shimming problems within some of the airplanes’ aft fuselages first discovered in 2019.

More recently, Boeing revealed last July that it found further problems involving the forward pressure bulkhead. During the inspections, engineers found small gaps between two sections of the bulkhead and reported the problem to the FAA. Then, last October, Boeing found that a subsupplier used faulty titanium in parts supplied by Leonardo. Boeing said the problem did not present a safety-of-flight issue, but it did complicate its efforts to return the 787 to service.