If Boeing manages to get the 787 certified in eight to nine months as planned, it will doubtless enjoy proving the long line of skeptics wrong. After all, to certify the airplane by the first quarter of next year will require far better execution than the company managed during the early stages of the project, when Boeing’s metamorphosis from airframe manufacturer to product “integrator” faced its first real test.
Of course, Boeing can rightly argue that the actual flight testing accounts for only a small part of the certification program, and that the extra two years it has spent straightening out production processes and helping its suppliers work through their own integration problems could work to its advantage over these next eight to nine months. In fact, early last month the company had submitted some two thirds of the type- and production-certificate “deliverables” for the 787 to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), according to program vice president and chief project engineer Mike Delaney. The flying program generates only about 10 percent of all the documentation that must go to the authorities before they deem the airplane ready for revenue service.
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