| Boeing acts to speed up 747 stretch |
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Boeing has replaced the leader of its 747-8 program in an effort to get the launch back on track. The aircraft is running more than a year behind schedule, and has gone way over budget. Pat Shanahan, vice president of airplane programs and general manager of the company's Commercial Airplanes unit, has replaced Mo Yahyavi, who took over the 747-8 program only in February 2009 but has now been given an unspecified “special assignment”. Four 747-8 freighters are going through flight tests. The official line is that launch customers Cargolux and Nippon Cargo Airlines will receive their first aircaft later this year, but with only 700 flight test hours completed, the 747-8F still has a long way to go. Analyst Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) said it believed the carriers were “in for an extended wait” and that first deliveries would not now be made until early 2011. The aircraft has suffered a number of setbacks since its maiden flight last February. Some 18 feet longer than the 747-400, it incorporate much changed technology, including a new wing design, new engines and avionics, and increased use of composites in its construction. Changing the chain of command “doesn’t change the events on the ground,” GLG said. Although the 747-8 should have been a “much less technically challenging program” than the 787, which is experiencing an even longer overrun, the analyst said the 747-8 had not been allocated the resources required to deal fast enough with issues such as fuselage flutter and landing gear door buffeting. The 747-8 freighter has attracted 76 orders against just 32 for the passenger version. It has been almost three years since Boeing announced any new orders for the freighter. GLG suggested this was because freight yields had yet to climb back to their pre-2007 levels, even in the resurgent Asia-Pacific markets. The analyst acknowledged that the performance benefits of the 747-8F “will not be matched for at least the next 15 years by anything comparable in size”, but commented that the 777F had given operators “a more flexible airplane to deploy when traffic is down yet still benefit from big cuts in fuel burn and trip cost”. Source: Air Cargo World, September 06, 2010 |
