Boeing shifted the delivery date for the 747-8 Freighter to Cargolux from late 2009 to the third quarter of 2010. First delivery of the 747-8 Intercontinental, a passenger variant struggling to attract orders, dropped from late 2010 to the second quarter of 2011.

The flight-test phase is now allotted between seven and nine months to complete, Teal says. By comparison, Boeing completed the flight-test programme for the 777-200LR, a perhaps less ambitious derivative programme, in about 10 months in 2005.

Those nonconforming nutplates that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago are on all Boeing jets, not just the 737. But there are far fewer on the 747, 777 and 767 than are on the 737. Still, Boeing said Tuesday that they must all be found and replaced before any more planes are delivered.

The Seattle Times, citing sources familiar with the situation, reports that 2000 fasteners will need to be replaced on the aft fuselage and 3000 for the forward fuselage produced by Spirit Aerosystems.

Dreamliners One through Four have had their engine pylons removed and returned to Spirit AeroSystems for fastener repairs. As a result, the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines from Dreamliner One have been removed and positioned behind the aircraft.

"PARIS -- Airbus benefited from the recent strike by workers at The Boeing Co. as it gave stretched suppliers more time to focus on orders from the European jet maker, the company said Friday."

According to Boeing, 737s delivered to customers since August 2007 contained non-conforming nutplates. Boeing's delivery website says that 394 737s were delivered between August 2007 and October 2008.

An estimated 3 percent of the fasteners on four flight-test planes at the Everett plant, plus two others that have been assembled for ground testing, were installed incorrectly and will have to be removed and replaced.

Engineers have traced it to improper instructions on what type and length of fasteners to use on certain titanium parts. The fasteners, located throughout the airplane, were installed mostly by suppliers at the plants where the major sections of the jet are being built, and affect all fuselage sections built so far

On board the delivery flight, Captain Peter Probert, whose father brought the first Boeing 747 into Australia in 1971, told passengers that the flight had been a career highlight

According to several sources inside the 787 program and others familiar with the schedule, assembly completion of Dreamliner One is now tentatively targeted for early October, a slip of about five weeks.

Assembly completion was initially set for August 31, just four days prior to the expiration of the IAM's three-year contract.

Now, however, the Pentagon is pushing for the replacement tankers as soon as possible after multiple delays. It remains unclear if a no-bid position from Boeing would drag out the KC-X competition or it if would compel the Pentagon to attempt a sole-source of the work to Northrop Grumman/EADS.

Shanahan, who has led the 787 program since October last year, said the latest hitch has been delays in getting the software in the 787's brake control system verified to meet stringent certification requirements. [...|"It's not that the brakes don't work, it's the traceability of the software," Shanahan said[...]He said that Crane had to go back and rewrite certain parts of the brake control software to verify it for the certification process.

The South Carolina plant that assembles the mid-fuselage of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner halted production for 24 hours beginning Monday night after a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) audit found lax manufacturing procedures that could result in damage to the aircraft sections.
[...]
He said it wasn't surprising the FAA found issues, given the high number of workers there who "never worked on airplanes before.
[...]
"In the beginning ... they were basically looking the other way to get the plane built," said the contractor. "Now people are paying attention to procedures and everything is being done by the letter of the law."