Boeing 787-9

There’s more progress to share as the 787-9 continues to roll along. The
wings for the first airplane recently arrived at our Everett factory

Boeing has reactivated the fourth 787 development aircraft in readiness for initial flight tests of the first engine for the stretched 787-9.
The aircraft, ZA004, which has been in long-term storage at Boeing Field, Wa., since last year, completed a series of check flights June 8-9, before departing for flight tests in Kona, Hawaii on the June 10.
The aircraft is currently powered by the latest Rolls-Royce ‘Package B’ standard Trent 1000 engines but in July will be fitted with the first set of upgraded ‘Package C’ standard engines which will later power the 787-9.

Package C will be rated at 74,000-lb. thrust, and is designed to have 1% better fuel burn relative to the current engine, which itself clawed back a 2.2% improvement over the first versions of the Trent 1000.
The engine is due to be certified mid-year, and will be the baseline engine for the 787-9 when it enters service with Air New Zealand in mid-2014.
The Package C version is also due to begin powering 787-8s from around June 2014.

Boeing Co. (BA) has picked the 787-9 Dreamliner as the variant to be used for a future freighter, a step toward opening a new market for the plane and extending a lead over Airbus SAS (EAD) in cargo aircraft.
The model will be based on the 787-9, the mid-sized version of the planes in that family, and eventually would replace the 767 freighter, Boeing Commercial Airplanes Vice President Mike Bair said in an interview at the Paris Air Show. He didn’t give a precise timeline.
“At some point in the far distant future the -9 is the freighter platform,” Bair said. “It’s the longest-range version and because of that it ends up being the highest-density freighter that we could make.”
A freight-only Dreamliner would create more buyers for a plane that Chicago-based Boeing pitches as having a 20 percent fuel-economy boost over comparable twin-engine jets. It also would extend Boeing’s wide-body sales lead, because Airbus’s largest models, the A350 and A380, don’t have cargo versions to compete with the U.S. company’s 777 and 747 freighters.
From the beginning of the Dreamliner’s development, Boeing designed the plane’s fuselage so it could efficiently handle pallets, Bair said. On the 787-9, which is set for its first flight this year, systems were cleared in the hull to install a cargo door, he said.