Boeing assembles the left-hand wings before working on the right. “Every single wing we build, we incorporate the learnings from the last, and we will get through it, but it has certainly been difficult for us,” Lindblad emphasizes. The main issues have centered on the details of the assembly process, such as determining the correct numbers and placement of the temporary fasteners that attach skin panels to the spars and ribs. “Fundamentally, we know it goes together; it’s just fine-tuning the process we have got,” Lindblad says.
The first set of fuselage subassemblies are already en route to the U.S. from Japan. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries supplies panels for the aft fuselage section, Kawasaki Heavy Industries produces panels for the center and forward fuselage section and Subaru (formerly Fuji Heavy Industries) makes the 11/45 center wingbox. “They started shipping [Feb. 7] and will arrive here in Everett over the next few weeks. In March, we will start fuselage assembly work, and my assessment is the Japanese partners have done a phenomenal job,” Lindblad says.
Assembly of the initial aircraft will take place at a temporary location in Building 40-23 between the current 747-8 and 777 assembly lines. Dubbed the low-rate, initial-production line, the site will be used to prove the production process on the new 777 variant without disrupting the adjacent 777-300ER. Final body join for the static airframe will occur in the second quarter, with the same milestone moment for the first flight-test aircraft set for the June-July time frame.
More than 30 ground-test labs, most of them in the Seattle area, are now up and running. The majority are component test benches for evaluating the hardware and software of each line-replaceable unit. “Right now, we are over 50% complete in terms of all the detailed test plans on those benches, and we will climb that curve,” Teal says. “Over the next month and a half or so, we will have wrung it all out.” For the next level, in which components such as hydraulics, actuators and flight controls are brought together for the first time, Boeing has set up the Integrated Test Vehicle. “That vehicle is up and running and executing today,” he says, adding that the facility is “halfway up the curve of what we need it to do.”
The E-Cab, an engineering fixed-base flight deck simulator, is also operational. “We declared it ready for test in January, and right now pilots are in it every day doing checkouts of flight control software and how it integrates with the avionics,” Teal notes. The final major test site, located at Boeing Field and dubbed Airplane Zero, incorporates all the laboratories and connects them with a simulation of the actual aircraft wiring. “It’s an airplane on the lab floor which we will turn on to make sure it works. We will be doing that in the second quarter of this year,” Teal explains. The big lab is in development to support assembly of the first flight-test aircraft for which “we will be turning on the power and getting it all running and humming by the middle of the third quarter or so,” he adds.
One watch item for the program, meanwhile, continues to be the delayed first flight of the 777X’s engine, the General Electric GE9X. Originally scheduled to begin evaluation at the start of the year on GE’s 747-400 flying testbed at Victorville, California, the test effort has been delayed by the discovery of a minor design issue with the variable stator vane (VSV) actuator arms of the new turbofan as well as maintenance-related problems with the testbed’s CF6 engines.
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