Boeing is holding shipments of fuselage sections for the 23rd production 787 at Charleston to give some of its suppliers time to “catch up”, and pushing assembly of the aircraft out to early June.
According to a report from Flightglobal.com, the 24 manufacturing day hold will allow suppliers to deal with parts shortages and incorporation of design changes ahead of the ramp up of production for the airliner, and will also avoid the need to introduce out-of-sequence work to the final assembly line at Everett. Final assembly work on Airplanes 19 to 22 will continue, while fuselage sections of Airplane 23 will remain at Charleston. The wings for Airplane 23 are understood to have recently arrived in the US from Japan.
Despite the halt, Boeing says that production and delivery schedules will not be impacted. The first 787 is due to be delivered to launch customer All Nippon Airlines by the end of the year.
