Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner looks like its delivery will be delayed again following the postponement of the aircraft’s first flight.
Owing to “a need to reinforce an area within the side-of-body section of the aircraft” the Dreamliner first flight which should have happened over the next week or so has been put back.
As a consequence of the delayed flight everything has to be rescheduled. Boeing stated that “following the final determination of the required modification and testing plan” it will take several weeks for the new schedule to be available.
A spokes person for the company, Scott Carson, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes said:
“Consideration was given to a temporary solution that would allow us to fly as scheduled, but we ultimately concluded that the right thing was to develop, design, test and incorporate a permanent modification to the localized area requiring reinforcement. Structural modifications like these are not uncommon in the development of new airplanes, and this is not an issue related to our choice of materials or the assembly and installation work of our team.”
The postponement of the flight is not the first delay as last year striking workers at Boeing’s manufacturing plant in Seattle held up production.