Boeing China issued a statement on International Finance News to deny the rumor that the Chicago-based company will delay its 787 planes delivery. The rumor swirled around the global market following Airbus' announcement of the delay of its A380 delivery. Boeing confirmed the punctual operation of the 787 planes as scheduled.

The statement says Boeing 787 is still under development and the contingencies so far in this period is in their expectation. It affirms that similar problem are unavoidable in the R&D stage, as what has been shown by their experienced in other airplane project.

The delay was first reported by Business Week. According to Business Week, the recent test on the nose of the plane found the overall weight of the aircraft is much heavier than expectation and there is flaw in the design of communication software. If these problems can not be solved timely and effectively, they will threaten the safety of the aircraft. So Boeing had to make technical improvement and carry out test again, which would result in the delay of 787 Dreamliners delivery originally scheduled in 2008.

Mei Yuanmei, a manager of Boeing China said these problems are normal in the process of optimizing the production and the company has found out causes and effective solutions to solve them.

Up to now, six Chinese airlines has signed contracts with Boeing to buy 60 787 Dreamliners worth 7.2 billion USD.

On June 13, Boeing's rival Airbus announced the delay of A380 delivery, which arose strong reaction on the market. Shares of Airbus parent EADS on Paris stock market tumbled by 26.32 percent on June 14, leading to the market capitalization shrinking 6 billion Euro, or one fourth of the market value of the company. Later, the senior official of EADS was investigated by France finance market authorities because of stock exchange against regulation.

In recent years, the competition between Boeing and Airbus heated on the China market. In June, the general assembly line of A320 settled down in Tianjin, which became the only such facilities of Airbus outside Europe. Meanwhile, the vice president of Boeing China Liu Jiang said Boeing has no plan at present to set up a general assembly line in China because it is still not possible to transfer core technologies and difficult to judge the market prospect.

By People's Daily Online