Boeing Commercial Airplanes faced fresh questions over its ability to stick to program timelines again last month. No more than six weeks after 747-8 Intercontinental program head Mo Yahyavi had confidently predicted that the new widebody would enter service as planned, the company announced that it would take a pre-tax charge against third-quarter results of approximately $1 billion “due to increased production costs and the difficult market conditions” associated with the program.
In fact, rather than flying three prototypes of the model’s cargo version by the end of this year, as Yahyavi had predicted in an interview with AIN in late August, the company now says it won’t fly the first airplane until early next year. Schedules now call for first delivery in the fourth quarter of next year, rather than the third, as last anticipated, although first delivery of the passenger version remains slated for the fourth quarter of 2011.
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