After more than a year, aerospace giant Boeing will be allowed to resume deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner planes “in the coming days” after the company made changes to its manufacturing process, US aviation security officials said on Monday.
Deliveries of the best-selling widebody aircraft have been halted since spring 2021, so the news is welcomed by US airlines and travelers who have suffered from massive delays and canceled flights in recent weeks, also due to the plane shortage.
“Boeing has made the necessary changes to ensure the 787 Dreamliner meets all certification standards,” the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The plane’s troubles date back to late summer 2020, when the company uncovered manufacturing defects on some jets. Boeing then identified other problems, including with the horizontal stabilizer.
The difficulties limited deliveries between November 2020 and March 2021. Boeing later halted deliveries in spring 2021 after more problems surfaced.
Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen met with safety inspectors in South Carolina last week to confirm they were satisfied with improvements the company was making to ensure they were meeting standards and to identify potential risks , after defects were discovered in the aircraft.
“The FAA will inspect each aircraft before issuing a certificate of airworthiness and clearing it for delivery,” the statement said. “We expect deliveries to resume in the coming days.”
– Ready to take off –
A company spokesman told AFP that Boeing “will continue to work transparently with the FAA and our customers to resume 787 deliveries,” but did not confirm that the company had received final FAA approval.
During a July 27 earnings conference call, Chief Executive Dave Calhoun described that the company was “close” to receiving approval, though he declined to give a specific target date.
At the end of June, Boeing had 120 Dreamliner aircraft in stock and was producing the jet “at very low prices,” the company said in a filing.
The company’s share price gained on the news, closing 0.5 percent higher.
The inability to deliver the Dreamliner has dragged down Boeing’s profits, which fell 67 percent in the second quarter. And the production changes have brought the company billions in additional costs.
The company has delivered just over 1,000 aircraft since its launch in 2004.
The increased regulatory scrutiny of the 787 and other Boeing planes follows two 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that resulted in planes being banned from skies around the world for more than a year.
But the MAX has since returned to service, allowing Boeing to ramp up production of the planes, generate significant revenue and announce significant new orders at the Farnborough Airshow earlier this month.
Even so, Boeing’s backlog in the pipeline lags behind that of arch-rival Airbus.
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