Boeing has announced it has recommenced deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner jet, having handed over one of the wide-body jets to United Airlines on Friday, March 26. The American planemaker is currently working through a raft of production defects that have kept dozens of the aircraft on the ground. However, Boeing remains on target with its previously projected delivery schedule for a few of the aircraft.
Deliveries of the 787 Dreamliner were suspended back in October 2020 and since then Boeing has dealt with structural integrity flaws embedded in dozens of the jets, during which period the company has suffered from the loss of a major source of revenue. It is understood that inspections and any necessary retrofits have the potential to take months for each individual Dreamliner, the result being costs for Boeing running into hundreds of million, if not billions of dollars.
The delivered jet was one of four that have been inspected by the FAA which last week had said it would handle pre-delivery checks on these particular aircraft. It was back in September 2020 that Boeing grounded eight 787 Dreamliners after finding two manufacturing flaws that could compromize the jet’s structural integrity.