WASHINGTON — Boeing delayed Thursday the delivery of its first Boeing 747-8 cargo airplane to mid-2011, a commercial production setback in a week that has seen the US aerospace giant win massive defense contracts.
Boeing said the pushed-back delivery schedule was due to problems discovered during flight tests.
The first 747-8 Freighter had been scheduled for delivery to launch customer Cargolux, based in Luxembourg, in the fourth quarter of this year.
Boeing said the postponement followed a "thorough assessment" of the problems, which include a low-frequency vibration in certain flight conditions and an underperforming aileron actuator, the movable airfoil at the trailing edge of an airplane wing.
"While neither issue requires structural changes to the airplane, they have led to disruptions to certification testing, which the program was unable to offset within the prior schedule," the Chicago-based company said in a statement.
To support the new schedule, a fifth airplane will be added to the flight-test fleet, it said.
"We recognize our customers are eager to add the 747-8 Freighter to their fleets, and we understand and regret any impact this schedule change may have on their plans to begin service with the airplane," Pat Shanahan, vice president and general manager, Airplane Programs, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in the statement.
The company said the new delivery schedule was not expected to have a significant impact on its 2010 financial results.
Boeing shares were up two percent, to 67.37 dollars, in early New York trading.
Boeing launched the Boeing 747-8 Freighter on November 14, 2005, with firm orders for 18 of the fuel-efficient aircraft: 10 from Cargolux and eight from Nippon Cargo Airlines of Japan.
Boeing said the combined list price value of the orders was about five billion dollars.
The new 747-8 family of commercial Model Aircraft, which includes the 747-8 Intercontinental passenger plane, is a stretch version of the wide body 747 and incorporates technologies of the company's new 787 Dreamliner, which it says uses 20 percent less fuel than similar planes.
The Freighter made its first test flight in February. The first delivery originally had been scheduled a year and a half ago.
The first delivery of Boeing's other new aircraft, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was postponed a sixth time, in August, from an initial schedule of 2008.
The company plans to deliver it to launch customer All Nippon Airways of Japan in the first quarter of 2011.
Boeing's announcement of another commercial production snag came in a week in which the company basked in a flood of multibillion-dollar Defense Department contracts.
The Pentagon on Wednesday awarded Boeing a contract worth nearly 12 billion dollars to help modernize B-52 weapons systems over eight years.
On Tuesday, Boeing said it had been awarded a three-year, 5.3-billion-dollar contract with the US Navy to build 124 fighter jets.
The US titan Boeing is currently battling European rival Airbus for a 40-billion-dollar US military aerial refueling tanker project. The winner will be announced in November.
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