By Susanna Ray -Bloomberg
Boeing Co. (BA)’s new 747-8 jumbo jet, the biggest plane it’s ever built, will be certified for cargo service tomorrow by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, a person familiar with the matter said.
The announcement will be made in the morning, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the details aren’t public. Doug Alder, a spokesman at Boeing’s commercial headquarters in Seattle, declined to comment.
The certification will cap a two-year delay to the plane’s entry into service. It also gives the jet a victory in what Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Jim Albaugh had referred to as a “horse race” with the 787 Dreamliner, which has finished flight tests though it hasn’t yet been certified. The 747-8 was set back in part because engineers were diverted to the 787.
The freighter version of the 747-8 will be the first to enter service, once it’s delivered to Luxembourg’s Cargolux Airlines International SA. The jet originally was supposed to be delivered in the third quarter of 2009. Flight tests continue on the 747-8 Intercontinental passenger version, due to begin service in early 2012 with Deutsche Lufthansa AG. (LHA)
The 747-8, with a stretched hump on top, new engines and the longest wings Boeing has ever built, went through an 18- month flight-test program that discovered some problems from the redesign, including flutter in the wings. The functionality of the new flight-management computer had to be scaled back to avoid further delays, with a software upgrade planned later.
The 787 Dreamliner, the world’s first composite-plastic airliner, is more than three years behind schedule. The FAA is reviewing its certification paperwork, and Boeing has said it expects to deliver the first one to Japan’s All Nippon Airways next month.
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