EoW November 2009

Transat lant ic Cable

The Charleston plant, bought by Boeing in July for ❈ ❈ $580 million plus about $420 million in debt forgiveness, is under consideration for expansion to accommodate a second assembly line for the Dreamliner. Acquisition of the plant, which also makes fuselage sections for the big plane, presumably offers Boeing a way to exert greater control over the production process and to resolve supplier problems. The prospect of the new line was welcome news in South Carolina, but the senators representing the state of Washington – home to Boeing production since 1916 – made plain that they will not willingly surrender any Boeing operation. “Our commitment to keeping Boeing in Washington has never wavered and never will,” reads a joint statement by the two senators. “The second line belongs in Washington State.” Wherever the new assembly line is sited, it will be in opera- tion by 2012, a Boeing spokesman said in August. A decision on the location is expected by the end of 2009. Dorothy Fabian – USA Editor

A spokeswoman for Boeing told the Times that the company had not disclosed the problem when it arose because it was not expected to affect the production schedule or the cost of the Dreamliner programme overall. She said the company had created an external patch to be applied to the skin of the mid-fuselage section of each of the first 23 Dreamliners sold. A permanent fix to the wrinkle problem was to be found for aircraft produced later. The stop-production order was delivered on the same day in June when Boeing announced its most recent postponement of the first flight of the 787, attributed to a structural flaw where the wings join the fuselage. Technical sources consulted by FlightBlogger said that the two problems and their fixes appear to be entirely separate issues. Alenia Aeronautica, a subsidiary of the Italian conglomerate ❈ ❈ Finmeccanica, had been building fuselages for the Dream- liner at a specially built factory in Grottaglie, Italy. From there, the fuselages were shipped to a Boeing plant in Charleston, South Carolina, aboard a modified 747. The first repairs to a 787, involving the addition of new layers of carbon composite material, were to be done in Charleston. The 22 other planes to be patched will be treated there and at factories in Italy and in Everett, Washington.

wire Düsseldorf 2010

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EuroWire – November 2009