Boeing Begins Assembly Work on Stretched Dreamliner Jet

According to Bloomberg News, work on the 787-9 jet has begun with Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. installing door frames in part of the fuselage.

Final assembly will be completed next year at Boeing’s main wide-body jet plant in Everett, WA, Randy Tinseth, the planemaker’s marketing chief, says in a blog post on the company website. The first flight will be next year as well, and the plane will be delivered to the first customer in 2014, Tinseth writes.

The 787-9 is 20ft (6m) longer than the 787-8 and will carry 16% more passengers as far as 8,500 nautical miles (15,700km), he wrote. The 787-8, the first version of the plane, carries as many as 250 people on routes of up to 8,200 nautical miles.

The Dreamliner is the world’s first composite-plastic airliner. It was 3 1/2 years late when it entered service last year, after Boeing struggled with the new materials and manufacturing processes it developed for the plane.