Le Bourget

Boeing expects to have 42 aircraft parked outside its 787 final assembly building in Everett, Wash., by the time the 250-seat jet achieves certification next spring and delivery in May to its launch customer, All Nippon Airways.

Despite that optimism, the company has learned that an industry-wide fastener shortage makes for an unpleasant picture.

Boeing was embarrassed, albeit temporarily, when a quality assurance photo that showed daylight, a 0.25-in. gap between fuselage sections as they were being mated on the first aircraft, was revealed on the Seattle Times' web site. In a briefing at the Paris air show, Vice President and 787 General Manager Mike Bair said that it wasn't poor tolerances on the 19-ft.-dia. barrels that produced the gap, but a combination of gravity, lack of internal support and a shortage of fasteners.

"We didn't have all the fasteners to put all the holding structures in place," he explained. So a nose barrel that was supposed to arrive rigid from Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, Kan., to be mated to a forward-fuselage section from Global Aeronautica in North Charleston, S.C., wasnt as stiff as it should have been. The blame was not on the suppliers, Bair said. The company is aware that finishing work has "traveled" to its final assembly line for the initial shipsets because of the demand on the fastener industry and the need to work kinks out of the production system.

When the necessary flooring and fasteners were installed, the barrel rounded to within tolerance and the barrel sections slid together properly. In fact, he bragged, the whole airplane fits. The first left wing-to-body join, a melding of assemblies from Global Aeronautica and Fuji, Kawasaki and Mitsubishi in Japan was within 40/1,000 in., while the right wing "was absolutely dead-on."

Also dead-on is the 787's sales campaign. An International Lease Finance Corp. order last week for 50 more 787s raised its total purchase to 74 aircraft and its ranking to No. 1 among Boeings 45 787 customers. Boeing now has 634 orders, "making it the fastest-selling commercial airplane in history of any size," says Boeing Commercial Airplanes President/CEO Scott Carson.

ILFC also exercised two 787 options, one 777-300ER option and ordered 10 737s. Its 777 count reached 79 orders, but Chairman/CEO Steven Udvar-Hazy says, "I'm sure the 787 will catch that in the near future." The leasing company is to begin receiving orders in January 2010 on a one-aircraft-per-month schedule until spring 2017.

For more, see the June 25 issue of Aviation Week & Space Technology.