Boeing’s Vice President of Marketing, Randy Tinseth, is back from a recent trip to South Carolina and has updated his blog Randy’s Journal with photos of the second 787 assembly line currently being built in Charleston.
Nothing particularly special to report but I thought I’d post the photos here so you can see how the new facility is coming along. The second assembly line in Charleston will be very important for Boeing as the company will need to produce upwards of 1,500 787s, according to some analysts, just to break even due to delays and glitches in the development of the new plane. Demand has been tremendously high for the 787, with over 800 orders for a plane that hasn’t been delivered yet, but Boeing’s ability to get the 787 into the hands of customers in an efficient manner will ultimately determine the success of the new plane.
Airports and Airplanes 
Boeing is very careful not to comment on the Fukishima nuclear accident. Boeing knows that the plants in Nagoya are experiencing part shortages, gas shortages, transportation infrastructure breakdowns, personnel deaths and radiation concerns.
35% of the 787 fuselage and 20% of the 777 is built in Japan. Boeing is 3 years behind schedule and 20 BILLION dollars in cost overruns and penalties. They know that any significant delay of the 787 into production will kill the program. It has already dried up seed money to be used for other programs. Annual revenue of Boeing is about 68 billon. This delay will bankrupt the commercial end of Boeing.
Russia has already notified Toyota that the recent cars delivered to it posed a serious radioactive health risk and were deciding on what to do with the cars. I can imagine that a similar thing is going to happen with the787 and 777 parts manufactured in Japan especially since the radioactive index has been upgraded from a 5 to a 7, i.e. a 100 times greater than it was at 5.