 Boeing delays 737 shipments
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-14 08:07 Boeing Co, the world's second-largest commercial planemaker, will delay deliveries of 737 model aircraft because of faulty parts and repair existing jets, hampering a recovery from a two-month machinists strike. "It's a big deal," said Michel Merluzeau, an aviation consultant at G2 Solution in Kirkland, Washington. "They're going to miss their production numbers by a huge margin this year." A Boeing supplier has been using bad nutplates - inch-long fasteners that attach wiring and other components to the inside of the 737's body - since August 2007, said Vicki Ray, a spokeswoman in Seattle for Chicago-based Boeing. The parts may be installed on 394 of the planes that Boeing built between August 2007 and October 2008, according to its website. The delays for the 737, the world's most widely flown jet, complicates Boeing's effort to resume shipments after a strike by machinists idled factories for two months through Nov 2, shaving more than $10 million a day from Boeing's profit. The world's second-largest commercial plane maker, which was building more than 30 737s a month before the walkout, hasn't yet given customers a new timetable for their planes on order. "We're still assessing our delivery schedule, so this is one of the many things we're factoring in as we start up our delivery line," Ray said. Boeing is working with the Federal Aviation Administration on a plan to inspect and repair the affected planes that are already in use by airlines, she said. "It's not an immediate safety-of-flight issue," Ray said. "It's an issue that would potentially lead to early corrosion. The part itself is structurally fine." The nutplates were made by one of three suppliers to Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems Holdings Inc, which builds the fuselages and sends them on trains for final assembly at Boeing's plant in Renton, Washington. About 30 percent of the nutplates - or everything made by that one supplier, which Spirit declined to identify - didn't have the cadmium coating they need to keep them from corroding the aluminum fuselage. Agencies (China Daily 11/14/2008 page16) |
