Boeing’s Charleston 787 assembly line rolled out its first 787 a few weeks ago and it took flight for the first time on May 23 for  a “B1” flight test.  3 more 787s will be built at Charleston this year and all 4 are for delivery to Air India (which can ill afford these right now but that’s another blog post.)

Am I the only one struck by how relatively smoothly the Charleston site got built, staffed and its first airplane assembled?  Obviously there was some learning curve alleviated as aircraft were assembled in Seattle.  However, this is the first commercial aircraft assembled at that site and there was just no real muss or fuss about it.

I suspect the Charleston site not only is going to reduce risk for Boeing over the next few years when it comes to the 787 but I also think that this effort is going to cause Boeing to look at other areas for manufacturing when it comes to other aircraft.

Seattle will remain Boeing Central for aircraft manufacturing but I think we just witnessed an excellent argument for Boeing not scaling production higher and higher for an aircraft in Seattle but to decentralize assembly of aircraft to other areas when large quantities are demanded for an airframe.

I really don’t think Boeing took nearly as much of a victory lap over their Charleston achievement that they could have.

Filed under: Aircraft Development by ajax