BANGALORE -- Boeing Co. said Wednesday it will deliver the first of the 27 Dreamliner aircraft ordered by national carrier Air India in the October-December quarter, a delay of nearly two years from the original schedule of late 2009.
Air India ordered the Boeing 787 Dreamliners as part of a $15 billion 111-aircraft order to Boeing and its rival Airbus in 2005. According to the initial delivery schedule, Air India should have received 20 Dreamliners by now and is estimated to have lost 60 billion rupees ($1.32 billion) in revenue due to the delays, an executive at the airline said recently.
Dinesh Keskar, Boeing India's president, declined to comment on the compensation the U.S. company may have to pay to Air India due to the delay in deliveries.
Boeing had on Jan. 18 said it now plans to deliver its first Dreamliner sometime in the third quarter of this year to Japan's All Nippon Airways Co. The Dreamliner program is already three years behind schedule, after being pushed back several times due to various technical issues.
The latest delay is the seventh such officially for the program and comes more than two months after Boeing halted flight testing across its fleet of six test planes following an in-flight electrical fire and subsequent emergency landing.
"In spite of all those issues, we have orders for 847 Dreamliners from 57 customers," Mr. Keskar told reporters at the Aero India 2011 show.
In India, Boeing also has orders for 10 Dreamliners from Jet Airways (India) Ltd.
Mr. Keskar said the first batch of engineers and pilots from Air India to manage Dreamliners is currently being trained by Boeing.
source: http://online.wsj.com
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