Another airline may cancel 787 Dreamliner orders

SEATTLE - Yet another delay for the Boeing Dreamliner. The news coincides with reports that another airline is canceling its 787 order.

A respected Australian aviation magazine is saying that China Eastern airline is considering canceling at least 15 Dreamliner orders.

Jim Albaugh, the chief of Boeing's airliner division, said Tuesday there will be another delay but how long is still unknown.

The plane known as ZA002, is being painted in the livery of the first 787 Customer. But just how soon Japan's All Nippon Airlines will receive its first plane for carrying passengers is once again up in the air. 

This will be the eighth delay, but analyst Michel Merluzeau with G-2 Solutions doesn't think it will be very long. 

"Three months, four months," he said. "Five months at the most."

Merluzeau thinks predictions by other analysts of six months to a year are way overblown. But the fact that the 787 Dreamliner is already nearly three years behind schedule makes any snag in the schedule the focus of more negative attention.

"I think it's the sequencing of the negative events that's doing more damage than the event itself, you know, you've had so many delays," said Merluzeau.

It has been a long time. ANA had hoped to have some of 787s back in 2008, in time to fly passengers to the Olympics in Beijing.  But just where does the 787 stand, considering it was the most successful launch of a Boeing jet based on orders?

So far this year, Boeing has seen 40 787 orders canceled, but won orders for 36 more planes, for a net loss of four Dreamliners. 

Despite everything, customers are hanging in there. There are 847 orders on the books, from 56 customers.

"To me, this is not as significant an event as the delays we've had in the past," said Merluzeau.

Boeing still calls the re-design work to as many as five of the plane's electrical panels as "minor,"  but says the re-design is still in the works, following the 30 second fire aboard the plane known as ZA002 in Texas. That plane returned to Seattle on Tuesday.

Boeing says repair crews replaced the damaged electrical panel and repaired some composite structure for its return flight. 

Wednesday is expected to bring a challenge for another jet.  Airbus is expected to announce what it's going to do about putting new higher efficiency engines onto the A320, which competes against Boeing' s super popular 737.

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