By Eric M. Johnson and David Shepardson
SEATTLE/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. air-safety regulators have told Boeing Co the documentation it submitted to win approval to resume 787 deliveries to airlines after a year is incomplete, two people familiar with the matter said.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) identified a number of omissions in Boeing’s documentation, submitted in late April, and has sent portions of it back to the planemaker, one of the people said.
A second person said it was too early to say whether FAA concerns would lead to a new delay in resuming deliveries, which have been suspended for the past year due to production flaws.
Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun highlighted the submission in the company’s April 27 earnings call, calling it a “very important step” and saying it was preparing the first 787s for delivery, but stopped short of providing a date.
People briefed on the matter say the submission was made shortly before the call.
A Boeing spokesperson said the company continues to have a transparent dialogue and work closely with the FAA on the remaining steps.
An FAA spokesman declined to elaborate, saying only, “Safety drives the pace of our reviews.”
Clearing a swollen inventory of twin-aisled Dreamliners and its best-selling 737 MAX jets is vital to the U.S. planemaker’s ability to emerge from the overlapping pandemic and jet-safety crises, a task complicated by supply-chain bottlenecks and war in Ukraine.
Deliveries of the 787 have been halted for a year as Boeing worked through inspections and repairs in an industrial headache expected to cost about $5.5 billion. Boeing has more than 100 of the advanced composite twin-aisle jets parked in inventory, worth about $12.5 billion.
In February, the FAA said it would not allow Boeing to self-certify individual new Boeing 787 planes. Then-FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said the agency needed from Boeing “a systemic fix to their production processes. They’ve got to produce the quality on their production line that we’re looking for and that they’ve committed to.”
The FAA said in February it would retain the authority to issue airworthiness certificates until it is confident “Boeing’s quality control and manufacturing processes consistently produce 787s that meet FAA design standards.”
Reuters reported in late April that Boeing has advised key airlines and parts suppliers that deliveries would resume in the second half of this year, with one industry source saying deliveries could resume in a matter of weeks.
Boeing’s certification package is a sprawling set of documents and data that shows the jet’s compliance, though the FAA controls the final determination. The package lays out inspections and repairs Boeing will undertake on dozens of planes sidelined by production flaws. The documentation is a crucial step before Boeing can resume deliveries.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
