Boeing's 787 as slow in coming as 707

Boeing Co.'s latest delay means the 787 Dreamliner will take almost as long to develop as the planemaker's original model that ushered the U.S. into the Jet Age more than a half-century ago.

The schedule Boeing announced yesterday would start 787 shipments to airlines in 2010, almost six years after the first order. That's about two years more than the average for other Boeing planes and rivals the six years and two months spent on the 707 in the 1950s. That aircraft, which started out as the Dash 80, was the forerunner of the more than 16,000 commercial jets the company has built since.

Punsters have had their way with the 787 Dreamliner amid the four delays since October 2007: It's the "7-Late-7" and the "Lateliner" in reports by Rob Stallard, an analyst in New York with Macquarie Research Equities. Newspapers including London's Daily Telegraph quipped about the Dreamliner turning into a nightmare. Chicago-based Boeing has lost 60 percent of its market value since the first delay.

"The 787 has seriously undermined the confidence that all stakeholders previously had in Boeing," Stallard said in an e- mail interview. "We think it will take a very long time to overcome the erosion to goodwill that has occurred."

The 787 remains Boeing's most successful new sales program based on orders and dollar value, with 910 on the books valued at $157 billion. Boeing has been counting on the plane to help it win back the position of world's largest commercial-plane maker, which it lost to Toulouse, France-based Airbus SAS in 2003.

'Phenomenal Leap'

The Dreamliner will be the first commercial aircraft to be built mainly of lightweight composites, rather than aluminum, to increase fuel efficiency and help airline clients cut costs. The new materials further complicated an assembly process that depends on vendors to build larges sections of the 787, which are then shipped to Boeing for final assembly in Everett, Washington.

The Dreamliner "will be a phenomenal leap, but not without its problems," said spokeswoman Liz Verdier in Seattle, where Boeing has built commercial aircraft for almost a century.

The Dash 80 made its first flight from Renton Field, south of Seattle, just two months after it rolled from the factory in 1954. The Dreamliner, in contrast, now isn't expected to have its first test flight until next year's second quarter, almost two years after it was unveiled to the public. The plane was supposed to have been delivered in May of this year to Japan's All Nippon Airways Co., the inaugural customer.