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Old 22-12-2006, 22:30   #1
Farmer
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Default Boeing nærmer seg 1000 ordrer også i år

Imponerende tall fra Boeing også i år. Tydeligvis godt hjulpet av problemene hos Airbus, men nok mest fordi de leverer gode fly !
Jeg hadde ikke helt fått med meg at 787 flyr allerede til sommeren 2007 og forventes å være i trafikk i 2008! Spennende! Kommer SAS med en ordre på 20 787 snart da mon tro ?

Artikkel fra Seattle times her :


Buoyant year for Boeing as Airbus reassembles
By Dominic Gates

At Boeing's Dreamliner Gallery in Everett, airline customers can tour the facility and select which materials, seating, galleys and other features will best serve the needs of their 787 fleet. The new jet moves to final assembly and its first flight next year.


The year in review — and what's ahead

Boeing coasts into 2007 with strong momentum and near-record orders, readying to build the 787. But for rival Airbus, next year will be all uphill.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Scott Carson, in a wide-ranging year-end interview, said the company has "a good, sustainable advantage, at least near-term."

But the production crisis that has delayed Airbus' 380 superjumbo hasn't made Carson complacent. He's keenly aware Boeing endured its own meltdown in the late 1990s.

"Our experience would say that you learn a lot going through those types of hardships and very likely emerge stronger," Carson said.

One potential threat to the current success was that labor relations with the Machinists union had gone so sour that they risked upsetting the 787's tight schedule.

Carson moved to defuse that problem by calling a mid-December summit meeting with Machinists union leaders in Chicago.

In the past year, Boeing added almost 6,000 jobs in the state, and now employs 68,000 here.

As 787 assembly begins in 2007, Boeing will hire an unspecified number of additional Machinists, Carson said.

But he said because the 787 "is not a labor-intensive platform for us in the factory in Everett" — there will be hundreds of mechanics, not thousands as on older programs — look for a continued "gradual increase in headcount," not a dramatic spike.

As 2006 ends, Boeing's jet sales are pushing last year's giddy heights.




The small 737 has drawn record orders. The latest version of the 747 jumbo jet is taking off.

The 787 Dreamliner remains on track to roll out next summer.

The North American market may pick up as U.S. airlines regain some financial health, offsetting any sales decline elsewhere. Boeing sees another good order year in 2007.

Airbus ends the year lagging Boeing badly in sales, though 2006 still will be Airbus' second-best year for orders, after 2005. But Airbus has other headaches.

It must fix the huge production problems on its flagship A380 jet program. At the same time it is struggling to sell a new plane, the A350, that will compete against the 787 and the 777 — but won't be ready until 2013, five years after the 787.

Ahead for Airbus lies a year of corporate restructuring with possible plant closures and layoffs in Europe.

"It's going to take Airbus a good five to seven years to make it back," said locally based industry analyst Scott Hamilton. "It took Boeing from 1997 to 2004 to come back."


A new style at the top


Since he replaced Alan Mulally, who left to head automaker Ford just over 100 days ago, Carson has changed the leadership style with his avuncular charm.

Mulally oversaw the business largely through weekly conferences with his direct reports. Carson started by visiting all the local factories and talking with employees.

And he initiated meetings with both blue-collar and white-collar union leaders.

That culminated in the Chicago meeting a week ago, when Carson, along with Boeing Chairman and Chief Executive Jim McNerney, met with district Machinists President Mark Blondin and international President Tom Buffenbarger.

The meeting signaled a shift in a relationship that had grown poisonous toward the end of Mulally's era.

Blondin, who led the Machinists in a monthlong strike in 2005, railed in private earlier this year about what he saw as Mulally's lack of responsiveness to the union.

Blondin spoke of striking Boeing again if things didn't change by the next contract negotiations in 2008. The first 787s are to be delivered that summer, giving him plenty of leverage.

"It's imperative the leadership of the Boeing Company hear unfiltered dialogue from its work force," Blondin said. "That's something we feel has been lacking in the past. We haven't been able to talk with the top leadership."

But Blondin heard a new tone in Chicago. "The meeting went well," he said. "We made some commitments to talk after the first of the year and keep the dialogue going."

For his part, Carson said avoiding a strike in 2008 was his top priority in the talks. "We've taken an important first step," he said. "I'm optimistic."


The 787


Boeing is focused now on pressing the five-year lead it enjoys over Airbus in delivery of the 787 vs. the A350.

Airbus finally launched the A350 this month but won't deliver it to airlines for 6-½ years.

Boeing's new airplane, the first passenger plane built entirely with plastic composites, is scheduled to enter service in 2008. So 2007, when the first 787s are assembled and tested, really begins a new era.

"There's no way you would ever build another purely aluminum airplane," Carson said. The next airplane Boeing develops — the replacement for the small 737 — "will be composite in some form or another," he said.

Carson admitted to some glitches in the 787 plan, but nothing so far to cause alarm.

"We are behind schedule in Italy," he said, "But they are turning their first part now, and we still have plans that support the rollout and first flight dates" next summer.

Meanwhile, the first large sections built in Wichita, Kan., and in Japan look "absolutely phenomenal," he said.


Airbus in shock


Adam Pilarski, an industry analyst with aviation-consultant Avitas, describes Airbus' 2006 as "a year of shock."

The A380 — the largest airliner ever — will be two years late because of severe, unresolved production problems.

A new chief executive hired in July to fix the mess, Christian Streiff, resigned abruptly in October. He criticized the company's unwieldy transnational organization and said a massive restructuring was needed.

Pilarski compares the situation to a person suffering a heart attack. After the shock, Airbus faces years of recovery, a new work regimen and strict cost-saving diets. Next year will be "a difficult year," Pilarski said.

Still, unlike some analysts, he won't write off Airbus or the A380.

"The A380 actually has a future — in the future," he said, "It wasn't a mistake to launch it."

In an end-of-year fillip for Airbus, Australian carrier Qantas and Singapore Airlines this week firmed up a total of 17 previously announced orders for the A380.

The European plane maker's real headache is the A350.

Doug McVitie, an analyst, former Airbus salesman and now virulent critic of management, said Airbus is forced to move at a slow pace on the A350 because it's straining to raise $15 billion in development funds.

"I don't think they could bring the airplane in any earlier," McVitie said.

Airbus finally settled on an A350 family that competes most directly with Boeing's 777.

But the second version of the new plane, to launch in 2014, will be a smaller, 787-size model to satisfy airlines that already had placed 140 orders for A350 configurations that were to be delivered two years sooner.

"We don't want those folks to wait too long," said Andy Shankland, senior vice president of sales for Airbus North America. "We're trying to have our cake and eat it too."


Virtual becomes reality


While Airbus works out that conundrum, Boeing next year will finally build the first 787s.

This month, the company had a "virtual rollout" to show off a complete 3-D model of its global production system produced on software from Dassault Systemes of France.

Dassault CEO Bernard Charles said that about 180 sites around the globe are networked together with the collaboration software to build the airplane.

(Airbus finally signed a contract for the same system in July, after the A380 problems surfaced. But it's not a simple matter of installing the software. "There are new work processes and methods," Charles said. "It takes time.")

Next year, 787 assembly mechanics in Everett will use tablet PCs to access 3-D displays of instructions as they put the airplane together, Charles said.

Because the 787 is sold out through 2013, Airbus can currently offer customers its A350 in the same timeframe. But that could change.

While Boeing plans to keep 787 production through 2009 at a steady rate of six to seven a month, it's studying the option of ramping up afterward to provide earlier delivery slots.

If that happens, with the A350 stuck on its 2013 schedule, 787 sales could bust the ceiling.

"If Boeing goes to 10 a month and can offer delivery in 2011, that would be an enormous advantage," said analyst Hamilton.

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Old 23-12-2006, 17:31   #2
brendas
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Default Re: Boeing nærmer seg 1000 ordrer også i år

Quote:
Originally posted by Farmer
Jeg hadde ikke helt fått med meg at 787 flyr allerede til sommeren 2007 og forventes å være i trafikk i 2008!
De første delene skal etter planen bli fraktet fra Nagoya Chubu 2.januar om alt går etter planen, og for en uke siden ble den første neseseksjonen sendt til sliping og boring i Wichita hos Spirit. 787 er mao mye mer enn et fly på papirstadiet.
Roll-out blir i juni/juli, og første flight i august, mens første leveranse til Ana blir i siste uke i april/de første to ukene av mai 2008.
I løpet av 2008 vil nok nærmere 70 787 bli satt i trafikk, og Boeing vil produsere flere maskiner som vil være klare for levering når de fem(/seks? (husker ikke helt..)) prototypene er ferdige med flight testing.
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