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BOEING Co. is not expected to resume delivery of the 787 Dreamliner until the end of October after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rejected its inspection proposal.
Reporting from Bloomberg, citing a Wall Street Journal report, a source said the aircraft manufacturer from Illinois, United States had not managed to get FAA approval after Boeing employees representing US transportation regulators did not support the plan.
Boeing declined to comment, but said it would continue to work with the FAA to make deliveries of the 787s possible.
“We have engaged the FAA in this regard through hundreds of hours of meetings and working sessions and will continue to do so. Boeing expects our teams to speak freely, ask questions and express their perspectives on very complex issues and technical issues,” the company said in a statement.
The Dreamliner project has been disrupted since a defect was discovered in July so deliveries have had to be delayed from May due to inspections by regulators.
“The FAA continues to engage with Boeing as the company works to demonstrate the reliability of the proposed method for inspecting certain undelivered 787 aircraft. The FAA will not sign off on an inspection until our safety experts are satisfied,” the FAA said in an emailed statement.
The Dreamliner is a wide-body aircraft with a passenger capacity of about 248-336 people. This type of aircraft first took to the air in 2011 operated by the airline ANA.
Previously, Boeing predicted that twin aisle or wide body aircraft such as the 777X and 787 Dreamliner would remain the foundation of the aviation industry in Southeast Asia.
Boeing Vice President of Commercial Marketing Darren Hulst said Southeast Asia’s fleet of double aisle aircraft is projected to grow by 55 percent until 2039 based on Boeing’s 2020 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO).
“In the next 20 years, approximately one in four double aisle aircraft will be delivered to the Asia-Pacific region and beyond which is reserved for airlines operating in Southeast Asia,” he concluded. [antaranews/photo special]
