All things 787: 787 Deliveries drop in July

787s built in Charleston are taking a long time to get through final assembly, ground and flight testing, and eventually to delivery with some planes taking as long as a 104 days.  Everett built 787s are being assembled and delivered 50 to 60 days…this is a huge difference and the reason is unclear though one can think back to the New York Times article that came out on April 20th, 2019 regarding shoddy work on the 787s built at Charleston.  These delays out of Charleston may be a backlash from that article. I theorize that Charleston managers are spending extra time to correct any workmanship issues but also the pace of assembly may be more than the Charleston facility can handle thus forcing them to roll out the aircraft not fully completed and doing some assembly tasks on the Charleston flightline.  This is similar to something we saw before in the early days of the 787 program at Everett. Unfinished assembly tasks known as traveled work followed airplanes out of the final assembly building onto the flightline where they were completed before ground testing and first flight of each new 787.  Also looking at the backlog on the flightline is evidence of something going on at Charleston:  There are currently 25 787s on between the two flightlines.  9 are at Everett and 16 are at Charleston while both final assembly locations are producing 787s at 7 airframes per month.  At Everett, of the 9 787s there, 5 have taken their B1 flight. At Charleston of the 16 airframes only 3 have flown for the first time. So the time between the roll out of the Charleston built aircraft and it’s first flight is more than those built at Everett and thus the total amount of time from final assembly to delivery has increased at Charleston and has caused a large backlog of airplanes at Charleston waiting to be delivered.

As mentioned previously, 787 production continues at the set pace of 14 per month equally distributed between both locations.  Both locations load and roll out aircraft virtually on the same dates.

It is clear that with the 787 program that this is now a high margin business for Boeing and, in light of the current issues in the other commercial aircraft programs, a key revenue driver.  Boeing can ill afford to have the 787 program stumble at this critical period and Charleston’s contribution that the 787 bottom line is crucial thus it must look to remediate the issues that are holding back deliveries.  August and September deliveries will be telling if there is any improvements in their production.

in the meantime you can follow the latest production and delivery progress of the entire 787 program by clicking on the link below for my 787 Spreadsheets.