Boeing has delivered the 500th 787 off the assembly to Colombian airline Avianca, the manufacturer says on 22 December.
The milestone was achieved five years and three months after the delivery of the first 787-8 to All Nippon Airways and 13 years since Boeing’s board of directors authorised the sales team to start selling the new widebody aircraft.
The model delivered to Avianca is a 787-8 with Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines and registration N793AV.
It took the 777 programme nine years to reach the same milestone in 2004, making the 787 the fastest twin-aisle aircraft to reach the 500th delivery mark.
The milestone means Boeing has a total of 710 orders for all three models of the 787 still in the backlog, which is enough for nearly five years of deliveries at the current production rate of 12 aircraft per month. Boeing plans to raise output to 14 787s per month by the end of the decade.
Despite the record-breaking production ramp-up, Boeing has only recently turned the corner on lowering the programme’s mountainous deferred production account. After climbing steadily to $28.7 billion in the first quarter of 2016, the total had declined to $27.5 billion by the end of September.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
