(ANA is gonna be the first customer... Dream on!)

In my PR days of 1997-99, my raging Boss had good contacts in Boeing and told me that the Boeing "Dreamliner" (or whatever that piece of crud is called ) was nothing more than a never-intended, non-existent PR stunt of a project to cast Boeing as "energetic" and " modern".

Boeing smirkingly thought the A3XX project was a hoax with similar intentions. Then they did a hard swallow when parts started getting fabbed in sheds and with a sh1t eating grin started to "gin up" the BadDreamLiner into reality. But they kinda "slow, slow, mucho slow" proceeded with it in the vain, vain hope that the A3XX was just some kinda "cauchemar" (bad dream) that might go away.

Then customers at airshows started asking them to come up "wi' da sh1t" they promised and they've greased along with a sickly grin ever since. Just in case you were ever wondering why the world's biggest airliner came out years before the still-never-seen-by-man-or-

beast Nightmare Liner... They really, really don't want to make that Thing.

Boeing Delays 787 Dreamliner Until 2010, Shuffles Managers

Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co. said the 787 Dreamliner won’t reach customers until the first quarter of 2010, almost two years behind schedule and the fourth delay for the best- selling new aircraft in the planemaker’s history.

The jet won’t fly for the first time until next year’s second quarter, in part because factories were idled for eight weeks by a machinists’ strike and some fasteners had to be replaced, Chicago-based Boeing said today. The company also shifted managers and created a new position to monitor operations by suppliers, who were blamed for previous delays.

“Not only is the timeline realistic, but the new organizational structure makes a lot of sense,” said Howard Rubel, a New York-based analyst with Jefferies & Co. who has a “buy” rating on the stock. “It’s a little better than the worst case, and I think they know there’s no more ‘control-alt- deletes’ allowed.”

Pat Shanahan, tapped as the 787’s manager last year to get the program under control, was placed in charge of all commercial planes. He replaces Carolyn Corvi, who will retire, with an expanded position. Scott Fancher will direct the Dreamliner’s development and report to Shanahan, Boeing said.

The 787, unveiled in July 2007, was due to enter service with All Nippon Airways Co. in May this year after Boeing’s shortest-ever flight-test program, arriving as airlines clamored for more-efficient planes to counter higher fuel prices. The Dreamliner has instead been beset by parts shortages, incomplete work from with suppliers and the recent strike, setting Boeing further behind in its goal of surpassing Airbus SAS.

“It’s like deja vu, all these things coming back to haunt us -- fasteners, flight-testing concerns and further delivery delays,” Rob Stallard, an analyst at Macquarie Research Equities in New York, said in an interview. His research note today was titled the “7 Late 7.”

Boeing Shares

The planemaker, led by Chief Executive Officer Jim McNerney, has lost about 60 percent of its market value since the first 787 delay, in October 2007. The stock fell 12 cents to $41.56 at 1:10 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading.

Boeing has orders from 58 customers for 895 Dreamliners valued at about $155 billion. The most recent goal was to fly by the end of this year and ship the planes in the third quarter of 2009. Boeing is still revising the delivery schedule for customers and will disclose the financial impact later.

The company is still planning on a nine-month flight-test program -- its most ambitious ever -- and expects to ramp up to building 10 Dreamliners a month in 2012, just later that year than originally expected when the last program update was given in April, spokeswoman Yvonne Leach said.

New Materials

Boeing is finishing engineering changes and tests to prepare for the flight, Shanahan, 46, said in today’s statement. Corvi, 57, is departing after 34 years at the company.

The planemaker is using new carbon composites instead of aluminum in much of the 787, adding a wrinkle in an already new manufacturing process. Suppliers in the U.S., Italy and Japan are supposed to build 70 percent of the plane and ship completed sections to Boeing’s Everett, Washington, factory for assembly.

The different languages and time zones hampered communication and stymied Boeing’s ability to fix problems that cropped up, Joseph Campbell, an analyst with Barclay’s Plc in New York, said in an interview yesterday.

“This program now has reached a level of delays and things going wrong that are really frustrating and beyond expectations” for both observers and long-time Boeing engineers, said Campbell, who has analyzed the company since the early 1980s. “It’s out of character for Boeing. Normally Boeing prides itself on being on-time and will overrun its budget in order to be on time.”

Overseeing Suppliers

The company also today appointed Ray Conner, 53, a 30-year Boeing veteran who was the head of sales for the commercial- airplane half of the business, to take a new position in charge of supplier-management operations. He’ll be replaced by Marlin Dailey, 52, who led sales in Europe.

While Airbus has also suffered program delays, the Toulouse, France-based company’s 525-seat A380 superjumbo successfully completed a test flight three months after its roll-out and encountered problems only once it entered production. The world’s largest planemaker, a unit of European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co., also had to redesign its A350 model, pushing production back to 2013 from as early as 2010.

In contrast, the Dreamliner’s first flight was originally targeted for August 2007.

787’s Customers

Boeing began telling customers this week of the new setback and will give them revised delivery dates by the end of the year, Leach said.

The first customer, Japan’s All Nippon, said in September that Boeing had told it before the strike to expect the plane in August 2009, which would have been 15 months later than the original target. Japan Airlines Corp., due to be the 787’s second operator, said earlier today that it was informed of an additional six-month delay but hasn’t yet been given a new delivery date.

“In spite of any delay, we continue to believe that our plan to purchase 787s is the right decision for our fleet renewal and replacement program,” said Andy Backover, a spokesman at American Airlines’ Fort Worth, Texas, headquarters. Boeing hasn’t yet told the AMR Corp. unit what the specific impact will be to its 42-plane order, he said. The first delivery was scheduled for September 2012.

Only one carrier so far has canceled a Dreamliner order. Azerbaijan Airlines in August substituted a 767 for one of its three 787s on order.

Boeing previously had said that a 57-day strike by the machinists, its largest union, over wages and job security would generate at least a day-for-day delay in all its programs. The strike ended Nov. 2 and cost the company about $10 million a day in lost profit during the third quarter.

Other new and existing models are also being delayed as workers focus on the 787 and problems discovered in recent months with faulty parts called nutplates that must now be replaced.