Who’s to blame for delays on boeing 787?

By Barry Shlachter, Jim Fuquay, Maria M. Perotin
Star-Telegram Staff Writers, December 17, 2007

Boeing has come in for a lot of media scrutiny about why it has fallen behind on its 787 Dreamliner program deadlines and why it is delaying the first flight and first shipments of the much-heralded jumbo jet by at least six months.

Although Boeing has said nearly all key suppliers have struggled to meet deadlines, much of the media attention has been on the role of Dallas-based Vought Aircraft Industries, which operates a factory in South Carolina building fuselage sections for the 787.

A Chicago Tribune report last week cast aspersions on another North Texas company, Advanced Integration Technology of Plano, which builds automated aircraft assembly tooling.

The Tribune said AIT was in part responsible for Vought's and some other suppliers' problems because it could not meet deadlines for delivering tooling to specifications.

But Vought spokeswoman Lynne Warne said, "It may be true with other suppliers, but not us." Boeing spokeswoman Yvonne Leach said the Tribune article "has issues."

Neither company took issue with a recent Wall Street Journal story that detailed the problems Vought has had trying to meet its commitments to Boeing. And Vought is not the only 787 supplier struggling to meet production commitments.

In a news release Friday, AIT President Ed Chalupa said, "We want everyone to know that our work on the Dreamliner is a success."

The release also said, "The recent allegations in the media are attributed to an unidentified foreman at a machine shop" and said AIT had "terminated the machine shop's contract due to poor performance before distributing the Dreamliner work to other facilities without affecting Vought's production requirements."

Star-Telegram