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VANCOUVER—Lufthansa Airlines is anticipating further delays of its first Boeing 777-9 deliveries and now does not expect the first one to come until 2026, later than Boeing’s current plan, CEO Jens Ritter said.
“We no longer believe that we will get the first aircraft in 2025,” Ritter, speaking to reporters during a Lufthansa event, said May 2.
“We think it will be here for the summer timetable 2026 at the earliest.”
Lufthansa, which has 27 777-9s on firm order, is among the 777X family launch customers planning for already-delayed first deliveries to come in 2025.
In response to an Aviation Week query, Boeing pointed to its most recent public updates, CFO Brian West’s comments on an April 24 earnings call and a note in a related financial filing. Taken together, they say the company still expects initial 777-9 deliveries in 2025, followed by the 777-8F in 2027, adding that the FAA will dictate exact timing.
The company continues to tell Lufthansa that the airline’s first 777-9 will arrive next summer, Ritter said. Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr said as recently as early March that he expected 777-9 deliveries to start in 2025.
But ongoing delays in getting type inspection authorization (TIA), the last critical step in the FAA’s certification process, suggest Boeing’s current timeline will be hard, if not impossible, to keep.
Ritter said his understanding of Boeing’s current plan is that it is based on having obtained 777-9 TIA approval, which would kick off official certification flight test campaign, in March or April at the latest.
Boeing first applied for TIA in 2021. But the FAA, citing a lack of sufficient technical data, said the aircraft was not ready.
Questions from the FAA and European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) around flight control redundancy were sorted out, as was a 2022 FAA requirement to re-calculate assumptions related to the airplane’s common core computing and networking backbone.
Boeing told Aviation Week in June 2023 that it was ready for TIA “from an airplane standpoint.” But the ongoing delays suggest unresolved issues remain.
“You can sense a certain tension [between Boeing and the FAA],” Ritter said. “The FAA still needs to kick off the process.”
The FAA, which has Boeing’s Commercial Airplanes operation under intense scrutiny for a variety of safety and quality lapses, said it “does not comment on ongoing certification projects.”
Speaking on the April 26 earnings call, West said Boeing will “follow the lead of the FAA as we progress through the process, including working to obtain approval from the FAA to begin certification flight testing.”
Lufthansa is sending a large team over to Boeing the week of May 9 to discuss the situation and get more clarity, Ritter said.
Ritter’s assessment of the 777-9’s progress is similar to that of Emirates Airline President Tim Clark, who said earlier in 2024 that deliveries to Emirates, another launch customer, could also shift into 2026, or six years later than originally planned. The airline has 205 777Xs on firm order and is by far the type’s largest customer.
While TIA timing remains unclear, several signs point to progress in the certification program. WH001, the 777-9 prototype and one of several aircraft in Boeing’s pre-TIA flight test program, has flown on an almost daily basis in recent weeks, online flight-tracking data shows. The aircraft has mainly been operating between Boeing Field, Seattle, and the company’s flight test site at Moses Lake. On April 26, it flew to Victorville, California, returning to Seattle the following day.
Other aircraft in the test fleet have shown little sign of recent activity, however. The second 777-9, WH002, which was particularly busy in late January and February with crosswind landing tests, high altitude airfield performance and nacelle drainage work, has not been airborne since April 1. The third test aircraft, WH003—which Boeing has said is expected to lead much of the certification effort—has not flown since the end of January. WH003, which originally joined the program in August 2020, has seen little activity since receiving its updated GE Aerospace GE9X engines late last year. The fourth aircraft, WH004, has not been active for over two years.
At Lufthansa, another sizable 777-9 delay could force the carrier to further revise its widebody fleet planning. Current plans call for a major fleet restructuring over the next three years that will see four aircraft types exit.
The airline’s nine remaining Airbus A330s will move to Brussels Airlines and Discover. Eight A340-600s are slated for retirement by the end of 2025, while 17 A340-300s and eight 747-400s are planned to leave the fleet by the end of 2027.
Lufthansa’s 787 and A350 fleets are growing. The airline is due to receive 34 more 787-9s, although some of the nearer term deliveries are delayed, partly because of seat certification issues, Ritter said. This could mean that the first 787 featuring the new “Allegris” cabin may not enter revenue service until 2025. The airline also has outstanding orders for 41 A350s, including 10 -1000s.
Ritter said the A340 and 747 fleets are no longer flying at the same level of productivity as the newer 787 and the A350 fleets—both of which are, in his view, flawless.
The airline has decided to put one more A340 and 747 on the ground as back-up aircraft to ensure schedule reliability. In addition to the eight remaining 747-400s, Lufthansa has 19 747-8s.
The airline is also in the process of reactivating all remaining eight A380s, but will park some of them in the winter when demand is lower.
—Sean Broderick contributed from Washington, D.C.
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