490 Firm Orders For Boeing 787 Dreamliner

[peter991]

Source

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is one of the most successful airplanes in history. It is an aircraft that is set to blow the minds of the aviation industry; not only because of it being one of the largest capacity aircrafts on the market today but also for the flexibility that it can offer to cater for any airlines’ needs.

This is most likely why the orders for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner have been, in the words of Boeing 787 program Vice President Mike Bair, “nothing short of phenomenal.” The Boeing 787 program can now list 490 firm orders with 38 customers and more than one thousand other potential sales in the works right now, highlighting the aircraft’s unchallenged acceptance in the aviation marketplace today.

In a media teleconference call conducted yesterday afternoon, Bair outlined the outlook for the 787 program for the next few years. He predicted that 112 deliveries would be made in 2008 and 2009, so right now, the program is going through the integration testing to assess if the systems will be ready on time.

When asked about what time of 2008 the first flight would be made, Bair responded pragmatically, saying: “if the plane is ready to fly, it will fly.” Such an answer may be a response to the uproar that ensued after Airbus was not able to deliver on its promise of completing production of its A380 with a delay of nearly two years. As Bair continued: “now the biggest challenge is to live up to the insatiable demand for the plane.” Despite this, Boeing has targeted the month of August for its first flight.

“But the bottom line is that thousands of people have worked together to bring this plane into the marketplace,” he elaborated. “We really appreciate the hard work that has been put into bringing this plane into production. We want to satisfy our customers who, in turn, want to satisfy their customers. So all-in-all, the travelling public benefits from this.”

This, along with the first delivery of the Dreamliner to be made to ANA in May 2008, is going to see excitement for the new aircraft build tremendously for 2007. As Bair finalised: “We have an exciting year ahead of us.”

[cdnvic]

Gonna be a beaut

Business class looks great, but the economy seats look like they got scavenged from a Convair 880.