AIRLINES started lining up yesterday for compensation after Boeing Co further delayed its new 787 Dreamliner plane, with Air New Zealand Ltd first to seek redress and Japan's two big airlines likely to follow suit.
The United States plane maker announced the third major delay for the revolutionary plane on Wednesday, promising first delivery in the third quarter of 2009, more than a year after the original target of May this year ?? with an indefinite delay for a short-range model favored by the Japanese carriers.
All Nippon Airways, due to receive the first plane, and Japan Airlines said they were assessing the cost of the delay and planned talks on compensation, while Australia's Qantas and Northwest Airlines Corp also expressed disappointment.
More than 50 airlines are waiting for a combined 892 of the Boeing 787s worth US$145 billion at list prices, with Qantas already seeking compensation for previous delays on its order for 65.
The New Zealand carrier will also begin compensation discussions with the plane maker, Chief Financial Officer Rob McDonald said.
"While disappointed, Air New Zealand has retained sufficient flexibility in its existing portfolio of leased and owned aircraft to ensure no capacity shortfall arises during this period," McDonald said in a statement.
Japanese airlines are also likely to seek redress from the Chicago-based plane maker, which has touted the carbon-composite Dreamliner as a breakthrough that would change aviation.
ANA spokesman Shinichi Shinkawa said the company would decide the size of compensation to seek once the overall impact from the delay on its business became clear. Its shares fell 1.7 percent.
Shares in JAL, which has 35 of the planes on order, fell 2.3 percent. Spokesman Hirokazu Inoue said it would start talks with Boeing about compensation once the impact became clear.
Mirroring Airbus
The delays for the Boeing 787 mirror the costly and embarrassing problems at arch-rival Airbus, a unit of European aerospace group EADS, which was two years late with its A380 super jumbo airliner.
The Dreamliner is now about 15 months behind schedule as Boeing makes slow progress on assembling the revolutionary plane and struggles with underperforming suppliers.
Boeing's plan was to outsource almost all major manufacturing to outside companies and then assemble the plane itself. It has since found that such a decentralized structure makes it hard to keep a check on suppliers' mistakes and delays.
However, shares in most of the US suppliers of parts for the plane rose on Wednesday, with the delay much shorter than investors had anticipated. Boeing shares jumped 4.8 percent.
If delays on the plane get even longer, airlines might postpone or cancel orders, which would likely boost sales of Boeing's established 767 and 777 models and increase interest in Airbus's competing AA350 XWB.
Boeing indefinitely delayed deliveries of the 787-3 variant, saying it would focus on the standard 787-8 and then the stretched 787-9.
JAL and ANA, the only two customers which are buying the shorter-range 787-3 variant, may be among the hardest hit.