Boeing 787 Dreamliner Hit With Cancellations As Order Backlog Continues

Boeing has been witnessing recent cancellations for their 787 Dreamliner as airlines continue to walk away from the high tech airplane due to delivery backlogs that have left some airlines uncertain as to when they can expect to see their shipments arrive.

Speaking to reporters in Seoul Boeing Marketing Vice President Randy Tinseth didn’t seem too worried about the cancellations when revealing:

“Frankly, as we look forward, we expect to see the Dreamliner order base increase, we expect to see more orders, we expect to see more cancellations, especially as we go through mitigation with our customers.”

Currently Boeing has more than 800 outstanding orders for the Dreamliner and made their first delivery to All Nippon Airways in September.

The Dreamliner and it’s light-weight, carbon-composite widebody is seen as a vast improvement over the company’s former planes, offering fuel savings and passenger comforts never before seen from the company’s commercial airliners.

Boeing is three years behind in delivering the aircraft due to global supply chain issues, largely because Boeing operates with the help of various parts suppliers around the world, a supply chain that is proving to be one of the least efficient in the manufacturing industry.

Tinseth says China Eastern has cancelled orders for 24 Dreamliners however they made up that order with 45 Boeing 737 narrowbodies. In the meantime the company ordered 15 Airbus A330s, the closest competitor to the Dreamliner.

As Kelvin Lau, an analyst at Daiwa Securities told Yahoo News:

“There is a good chance that other Chinese airlines will also cancel their 787 orders because most of the time they will act together,”

“This indicates that China Eastern is taking a bearish view on long-haul and believes the recovery in the United States and Europe won’t come soon, so they don’t want to invest so much on big planes for long-haul,” he said.

Boeing is hoping to increase production from two Dreamliners per month to 10 per month by 2013, a number some analysts believe is overly ambitious.