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Boeing Gets a Multi-Billion Dollar Dose of Good News - 787 Dreamliner Deliveries Approved

Chicago-based Boeing Commercial Airplanes is bouncing back from what has been by far, the most tumultuous 3-year period in the 106-year-old company's history.
787 Dreamliner 10 photos
Photo: Boeing
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The news came yesterday (August 8) from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that it has given the green light for the company to restart deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner. American Airlines is said to be taking delivery of the first Dreamliner to be delivered since April 2019 as early as Wednesday and put into service in the coming weeks.

The company suspended deliveries of its popular composite airplane in May 2021 after the FAA expressed concerns about a proposed inspection method regarding critical quality adherence issues. The proposed inspection method came after the FAA began investigating some 787 planes for manufacturing flaws in September of 2020.

Just last month, the FAA approved the company's inspection plan that specifically focused on meeting manufacturing requirements, and all retrofit work on completed planes had been done.

Despite being satisfied with the inspection process, the FAA will inspect each aircraft before an airworthiness certificate is issued and cleared for delivery; a process that is normally left up to the manufacturer.

A spokesman for Boeing said it continues "to work transparently with the FAA and our customers towards resuming 787 deliveries.”

The deliveries could not come soon enough as it is currently sitting on 120 aircraft awaiting the delivery go-ahead representing tens of billions of dollars in gross revenue.

Prior to the company stopping deliveries last year, the FAA had issued two airworthiness directives aimed at production issue for in-service aircraft. An additional directive was added in July 2021 after the delivery stoppage.

Inspections revealed production flaws in the planes that included out-of-tolerance gaps between fuselage panels and an issue with the use of an out-of-spec titanium alloy for certain fuselage fittings by an Italian supplier.

For its part, American Airplanes expects to take delivery of nine 787 variants of the 42 it has on order, with two coming early this month
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