Nippon Airways to Receive Its Dreamliner Next Week

Boeing Co. (NYSE:BA)’s much awaited 787 Dreamliner which holds the distinction of being the first commercial aircraft to be made largely of lightweight composite materials is almost ready for delivery.

Dreamliner 787 is one of the most challenging programs Boeing has undertaken and the first Dreamliner will be delivered to a customer in the coming week. The project hit numerous road blocks and hurdles during the development stages with the Dreamliner program falling behind schedule by more than three years and it also overshot the estimated budget by several billion dollars. But at last, the first Dreamliner is all ready for delivery to its first customer, All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd. of Japan. The Dreamliner 787 is scheduled to be delivered on Sunday. The Dreamliner program has been under development since 2003.

The delivery of the first 787 will mark a new era for the aircraft both in terms of consumer use as well as manufacturing. With the new airplane ready for skies, there are many people who can’t wait to fly in one of this airplane.

Boeing Co. which competes with Airbus, an unit of EADS for aircraft orders has planned celebrations for three continuous days commemorating the delivery. Contractual delivery is a technical step during which the payment is made as the aircraft changes hands, and this Sunday will fetch Boeing Co. its first paycheck from the Dreamliner program. Boeing has made plans to arrange a party at the company’s assembly plant in Everett, Washington on Monday as well. The aircraft will fly for Japan on Tuesday.

The party comes as a change, after the last week’s incident which caused another first major delivery of Boeing’s 747-8 Freighter to get postponed following a contract dispute with its customer.  The Dreamliner 787 competes with Airbus A350 and in spite of the program getting delayed seven times, 787 has remained as a favorite among many airline customers. As of today, Boeing is sitting upon orders for 821 Dreamliners and it expects more to come its way.

The company still faces a daunting task of increasing the rate of production of its Dreamliners to the promised tem aircrafts per month by the end of 2013 in order to clear the enormous order backlog. The timeline for increasing production seems to be too short, and according to few experts it may be hard for the company to achieve the required production rate in such a short span of time.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.