Boeing has released a new testing and production schedule for its 787 jet program, which is now two years behind schedule. The 787’s first flight will happen by the end of this year and deliveries will begin in late 2010, but investors are skeptical the company will stick to that timeline, the Seattle Times reported. The latest delays, announced in June, came when engineers discovered weaknesses in the joints that connect the wings with the fuselage. The first three test planes have been so extensively modified to correct those flaws that customers don’t want to buy them once flight tests are complete, so Boeing is taking a $2.5 billion loss on those aircraft. The losses will climb higher as some airlines will seek compensation for the delays. All Nippon Airways, the Dreamliner’s first customer, has said it will seek an unspecified amount from Boeing, likely in the form of discounts on new planes. ANA has ordered 55 Dreamliners and was once slated to start getting them in late 2008, Bloomberg reported. Because of the delays, it ordered several Boeing 767s instead. Other airlines may also follow suit, and 75 orders for the 787 have been cancelled this year, leaving Boeing with what remains a record 850 orders for the plane. To help it speed up production once the plane gets off the ground, Boeing may convert a facility it recently purchased in South Carolina. That plant, which was previously owned by a company that made the 787’s rear fuselage assembly, would be the first such final assembly facility outside of the Seattle region. Washington state is also vying to have a second Dreamliner final assembly line located there, and Boeing has not yet made its decision.

The problems with the joints where the carbon-fiber wings meet the fuselage on the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner will take longer to fix and are more serious than originally thought. During ground-based stress tests, engineers noticed that the I-beam shaped stringers inside the wing were compressing when the wings flexed up, causing the skin of the wing to peel apart in places, the Seattle Times reported. Those problems emerged just past the plane’s limit load, the stresses it might encounter in flight. Previously, those issues had been reported as happening only close to the ultimate load, which is far beyond what aircraft would encounter while flying. Because of how the center wing box is designed, the stress was being transferred to the stringers inside the wing box, causing them to compress as well. While the wing delamination problem wouldn’t be dangerous at first, it could require costly regular maintenance for airlines. The fix, Boeing’s engineers say, will require reshaping parts of the stringers in the wings and in the center wing box, as well as adding new bolts. Boeing said it will release an updated testing and delivery schedule in the next two months.

Federal investigators have not yet come up with an explanation for how a football-size hole ruptured in the top of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-500 fuselage during a flight last week. There were no injuries when a portion of the fuselage opened up, rapidly decompressing the cabin and forcing the plane, traveling from Nashville to Baltimore, to make an emergency landing in West Virginia, ABC News reported. Investigators cut out the damaged section of the fuselage – an area measuring about two feet on each side – to inspect the aluminum, but did not note any obvious signs of fatigue or corrosion. The 15-year-old jet has logged about 42,000 cycles. Following the emergency landing, Southwest inspected all of its 500-series 737s overnight, but did not find problems with any of them. Continental Airlines, which also flies a handful of that model, inspected its planes as well.

The initial report by French investigators into the June 1 crash of Air France flight 447 in the Atlantic Ocean shows there were communication problems between air traffic controllers in Brazil and Senegal at the time of the crash. Flight 447 never made contact with air traffic controllers in Senegal monitoring a wide swath of the Atlantic, but for several hours, the controllers in Dakar assumed the flight had flown through their airspace and into Cape Verde’s airspace, the French report says. About three hours after taking off, flight 447 sent a string of automated messages over ACARS to Air France that the autopilot had disconnected and that there were several failures on the primary flight displays. For several hours after that, controllers in Dakar and Cape Verde called each other and talked about estimates for where the flight would be, but neither ever had contact with flight 447. Four hours after the burst of ACARS messages that lead up to the crash, and without contact from flight 447, the Dakar controller told the Brazilian controller that the flight had passed into another control area. In the course of its investigation, French authorities found that three other flights in the area at the time deviated as much as 80 miles around large thunderstorms that may have played a role in the crash. Two of those flights also had trouble reaching controllers in Dakar over high-frequency radio. So far, 50 bodies have been recovered from flight 447, as well as an assortment of parts of the plane, including the vertical stabilizer, a bathroom door, parts of the crew rest area and part of a galley. The flight data and cockpit voice recorders have not been located, and officials have said they may never be found since the signals would be faint by now.

Last week’s Paris Air Show gave Airbus a chance to gloat on several fronts, as it tallied 58 firm aircraft orders for the week – well beyond the two firm orders Boeing pull in but less than a quarter of last year’s tally for Airbus at Farnborough, England. And Airbus said it remains in a strong position to bid on the U.S. Air Force’s forthcoming midair refueling tanker contract, the London Telegraph reported. Airbus plans to again offer a modified A330, which would be built in Alabama. Boeing said it would give the Air Force a choice of a modified 767 or larger 777. The latter would likely be more expensive, but would be able to hold more fuel and cargo than the A330. Last fall, the Air Force withdrew the contract after awarding it to Airbus, when the Department of Defense found that Boeing had been unfairly penalized in scoring the competing offerings. But Airbus remains confident it will prevail again in a contract that could mean $35 billion of revenue for one of the companies in the coming years.

While vacation bookings to Cape Cod are off 30 percent for this summer compared to last year, executives at the regional carrier Cape Air aren’t too worried about the drop. The airline, which operates a fleet of twin-engine Cessna 402s, is cutting flights on some of its vacation routes and using the planes to expand service to Baltimore, White Plains and New Hampshire, the Provincetown Banner reported. Cape Air is considering enlarging its Caribbean and Florida service, and may even expand to Cuba if travel restrictions there are lifted. Cape Air hasn’t laid off any of its 700 employees in the current downturn. A bigger concern is what to do with its aging fleet of 402s, which company executives expect have 10 to 15 more years of life in them. With the 402 out of production, Cape Air has been buying up used ones to scrap for parts. The airline hasn’t settled on a replacement aircraft for its fleet, but it wants to stick with a smaller plane like the 402, which seats nine passengers.

The two pilots flying Continental Connection flight 3407 when it crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., in February may have slept in the crew lounge at Newark before the flight and one commuted overnight from Seattle the night before. Those and other details into the flight emerged during three days of National Transportation Safety Board hearings last week, shining a bright light on the grueling schedules pilots for regional airlines must maintain, the New York Times reported. Colgan Air, which operated the Continental Connection flight, said at the hearings that Capt. Marvin Renslow made about $55,000 per year and that First Officer Rebecca Shaw earned $25,000 annually. But the NTSB calculated, based on the number of hours in her logbook, that Shaw was actually earning just $16,000 per year, since pay is based on the number of hours in the air. The hearing also focused on whether Shaw may have been sick and whether Renslow had ever received training on how the Bombardier Q400’s stick shaker and stick pusher worked – both devices made to prevent a stall. What the cockpit voice recorder transcripts made clear was that both pilots violated sterile cockpit rules during the approach and neither appeared to notice that the plane was loosing airspeed in the seconds before it stalled. The CVR also captured a conversation between the two pilots in which Shaw said she had never flown in icing conditions and was worried about doing so; the plane crashed in an area of light to moderate icing.

An Air Force staff sergeant flying a civilian flight from Chicago to Tokyo last month spotted a fuel leak that could have put the plane in dire straits. Staff Sgt. Bartek Bachleda, who is a midair refueling boom operator, had a window seat and noticed fuel streaming out from underneath the wing of the Boeing 747 soon into the flight, the Air Force reported. He shot video of the fuel leak and alerted a flight attendant, who initially was unconcerned. A few minutes later, with fuel continuing to stream out from the wing, Bachleda identified himself as an Air Force officer and told the flight attendant that it was an emergency situation. The captain of the flight came back to Bachleda’s seat and soon after seeing the fuel leak, turned the plane toward San Francisco, where it landed uneventfully. The Air Force did not list the airline Bachleda was flying or the date he flew, though a picture of the fuel leak shows the plane’s winglet painted in United Airlines’ livery. A search of Flight Aware’s previous flight plans shows that on April 18, United flight 881, which flies daily from Chicago O’Hare to Tokyo Narita, made an abrupt turn over the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border for San Francisco instead.

An airport in Phoenix and one in Louisiana are the newest recipients of federal funding to help upgrade them from their former use as military bases. Phoenix-Mesa Gateway and Alexandria International Airport will share $23.7 million this year with 10 airports already receiving the funds, according to the FAA. At Alexandria, the funding will pay to overhaul an aging and outdated fuel farm. The airport supports daily commercial flights to Houston, Dallas, Memphis and Atlanta. Phoenix-Mesa will use its share of the funding to upgrade a small passenger terminal that quickly become overwhelmed when Allegiant Air began flights to the airport in late 2007. The airport recorded 120,000 passenger boardings in the first nine months of last year, due in large part to Allegiant’s flights. The Military Airport Program funding is a subset of the money available through the Airport Improvement Program.

This time last year, American Airlines was forced to ground its fleet of MD-80 jets to fix problems with how the planes had been repaired, stranding tens of thousands of travelers and costing the airline millions of dollars. A year later, American is being subjected to a three-month audit of its maintenance practices as the FAA cracks down on maintenance and other issues, the Dallas Morning News reported. Most recently, the agency discovered that thrust reversers on American’s fleet of Boeing 777s weren’t reassembled correctly, and that mechanics were using the wrong tool to pack emergency slides in some other aircraft. While the airline is complaining about having to comply with the strictest letter of the law, it hasn’t had to ground large portions of its fleet, either, due to the FAA’s willingness to give the airline a flexible repair schedule. The new oversight comes after the FAA came under the gun last year for letting airlines get away with maintenance lapses.