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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Chief confident of on-time delivery


Mike Bair, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president and general manager of the 787 program, poses with a model of the plane on Friday.
 (The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press The Spokesman-Review

SEATTLE — None of the early problems Boeing Co. encountered with suppliers for its new 787 Dreamliner jet has shaken its confidence that it will smooth out production kinks and deliver the plane on schedule, the head of the program said Friday.

“We’ve had challenges. You always have challenges when you have a program this complicated going together in what is really kind of record time,” Mike Bair told reporters at a briefing two days before the first 787 was scheduled to be unveiled.

“It’s stuff we know what to do with,” Bair said. “We are expediting a lot of parts right now, and we’re going to make sure we get the production system running the way it needs to run.”

The 787 that will be displayed on Sunday still has about 1,000 temporary fasteners that must be replaced with permanent ones, and machinists will have to spend several more weeks installing and testing electrical wiring and other systems before the plane is ready to fly, Bair said.

Flight testing on the midsize, long-haul plane is expected to begin in late August or September, he said.

“We don’t schedule first flights,” Bair said. “The airplane flies when it’s ready. To put a firm date on the calendar might make you do something you don’t want to do.”

The 787, Boeing’s first all-new plane since airlines started flying the 777 in 1995, is scheduled to enter commercial service next May, when Japan’s All Nippon Airways Co. takes delivery of the first of 50 Dreamliners it has ordered.

To date, Boeing has won 642 orders for the 787, selling out delivery positions through at least 2013, the year rival Airbus expects to roll out its competing A350 XWB.

It will be the world’s first commercial jetliner made mostly of carbon-fiber composites, which are lighter and sturdier than aluminum.

Boeing has said that and other technological advances will make the 787 more fuel-efficient and cheaper to maintain.

Because demand for the 787 has exceeded the company’s expectations, it is looking at ways to boost production rates, but is not ready to say how much faster those rates will be or when the increase will happen.