Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [31]
The first C-check interval after first flight, for example, was expected to be up to thirty-six months after delivery. Compared with the standard interval before the same milestone on a 767-300 being flown twice a day, the 7E7 “will be able to fly an extra 169 flights,” said John Feren, who presided at the event. This was mostly due to the extensive use of advanced composites, more electric systems, and sophisticated self-diagnostic systems in the aircraft, which, like a person able to monitor his own body, would be able to tell the crew if it needed a checkup.
By now the Dreamliner shape was also all but firmed up. Boeing had accomplished 75 percent of the planned wind tunnel campaigns, amassing an astonishing eleven thousand hours of tests in the process. Composite use by weight had now crept up beyond 50 percent, slightly higher than a year earlier, and “it might go up a bit more between now and final configuration,” forecast Feren.
NEW YEAR, NEW NAME
Boeing’s sales surge in late 2004 changed abruptly into a tsunami of orders over the busy winter. JAL, one of the earliest sales goals for the Dreamliner, quietly signaled its intent to commit to thirty aircraft plus twenty options. Although the deal would not become official for several months, Boeing was relieved at the JAL decision, which had become more protracted than anyone expected.
The new year also saw long-running negotiations with a group of Chinese carriers finally bearing fruit. The momentous deal, covering up to sixty aircraft worth about $7.2 billion, was signed with Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainen, Shanghai, and Xiamen airlines at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. Alongside Mulally’s signature appeared those of U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce Al Frink; the Chinese Ambassador to the United States, Yang Jiechi; and China Aviation Supplies President Li Hai. Significantly and not unexpectedly, the sale also marked the milestone renaming of the 7E7 as the 787. This was not only the next number in line after the 777, the last all-new Boeing airliner launched almost fifteen years before, but it also conveniently contained the number “8,” which is considered lucky in many Asian cultures.
The agreement, which came several months later than Boeing originally hoped, followed a complex series of talks and supplier deals with Chinese aerospace companies that began as far back as a Boeing 7E7 conference in Beijing on May 25, 2004. After the conference, which was attended by the Civil Aviation Authority of China, government approval was sought to proceed, with the firm order to be placed on the airlines’ behalf by the state-run China Aviation Supplies Import & Export Group.
In line with Boeing’s optimistic delivery forecast, the negotiations also included guarantees each that carrier would receive its first aircraft before the start of the Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008. Little did anyone realize that production delays would make this impossible and that flight tests by then would not even be under way. Allocations from the order, which, excluding options, took overall firm orders and commitments to about 186, included 15 each for Air China and China Eastern, 13 for China Southern (3 of them for its Xiamen subsidiary), 8 for Hainan, and 9 for Shanghai Airlines.
In the wake of the Chinese deal, Boeing also finalized more workshare contracts in Asia, including a contract with China’s Chengdu Aircraft Industrial for the 787’s rudder, and Korea Aerospace Industries for the fixed trailing edge. Ironically, at about the same time the rudder