Boeing continues to address problems affecting the dispatch reliability of its 787 aircraft, including issues caused by faulty messages from the aircraft computer systems.
The nearly 100 787s operated by 16 customers worldwide have a dispatch reliability of roughly 97%, but some operators have reliability rates much lower, says Boeing’s president and chief executive James McNerney during the company’s third quarter earnings call on 23 October.
“We are not yet satisfied with fleet-wide performance... . We will not be satisfied until we are meeting our customers expectations across the board,” McNerney says.
Roughly one-third of problems are caused by false messages from the 787’s software, according to McNerney.
“That is frustrating for us and very frustrating for customers,” he says.
The company is addressing the problems by making engineering changes to the software and making more spare parts available, McNerney adds.
“We are making good progress,” he says. “We still have more work to do.”
Technical problems grounded a 787 operated by Norwegian for 12 days in October, and two Japan Airlines 787s diverted in October due to technical problems.
Despite the 787 problems, Boeing reported an operating profit of $1.8 billion in the third quarter, up 16% from the same period last year.
The commercial aircraft division earned an operating profit of $1.6 billion, up 40% year-over-year.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
