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Boeing calls its much-anticipated new 787 the Dreamliner, but the hot-selling, revolutionary jet looks more like a public relations nightmare after last week's decision to delay the first flight for the fifth time.

Boeing said a design weakness discovered recently will force an indefinite delay of the first flight. That after top Boeing executives' repeated vows that the plane would fly by June 30, the last day of the second quarter.

This new delay reinforces a perception that Boeing's management either is unrealistic in setting goals or is incapable of meeting them as it tries to develop a plane that could change the economics of air travel more than any plane since the introduction of commercial jets in the late 1950s. In cutting by 20 percent the amount of fuel needed to fly international routes -- and emissions by a corresponding amount -- the 787 could reduce airline operating costs and, in theory, the prices passengers pay.

On Tuesday, Scott Carson, head of Boeing's Commercial Airplanes division, told analysts and reporters that a problem first noticed in ground testing last month proved to be a bigger issue than initially thought.

"We're all anxious to see this airplane fly," Carson said. But, ''It's important that it flies when it's ready to fly."

That's a big turnaround from Carson's assertion a week earlier at the Paris Air Show that he was certain the 787 could fly before July 1.

In addition, Boeing CEO James McNerney vowed publicly early this year that the 787 would fly before the end of the second quarter and repeated that vow as recently as last month.

Creating a breakthrough aircraft has proved to be a bigger challenge than Boeing officials expected, and that's damaging the company's reputation and credibility. Not only is Boeing creating a plane in which half of its structural weight comes from composite materials instead of conventional aluminum, it is attempting to radically change the way planes are made.

Conventional planes are built on an assembly line, where pieces supplied by subcontractors are attached using hundreds of thousands of rivets. With the 787, Boeing has turned subcontractors into "risk-sharing partners" that assemble large sections of the plane or components all over the world. Those big sections are then shipped to Boeing's final assembly line in Everett, Wash., where they are pieced together using a new technique that requires fewer than 10,000 holes to be drilled into the plane, compared with hundreds of thousands in other models. Eventually, once workers get the hang of it, Boeing officials say, the final assembly of pieces built elsewhere should take just three days.

The original plan was for the 787 to make its maiden flight in 2007 and to enter service in 2008. But vexing manufacturing problems, a management shake-up and a strike have all taken a toll. The most recent schedule had the 787 on what many experts said was an unrealistically short timetable: the first flight by the end of this month with first delivery in March 2010 to Japan's All Nippon Airways.

It's not clear yet that the 787's first flight will happen this summer. There's no indication as to how long it will take to come up with a way to reinforce 18 small spots on each side of the plane where the fuselage meets the wings. Those spots -- each less than 2 inches and located where the top of the wing joins the fuselage -- will have to be reinforced before the aircraft can go through its flight-testing program. Ground testing will continue while engineers address the side-body problem.

The 787 is the hottest-selling commercial jetliner ever, but the production delays and the global recession have whittled down its order book.

Boeing says 56 airlines have placed 866 orders for the $200 million Dreamliners, 44 fewer than it claimed at one point last year. Plus, some carriers have deferred deliveries of some or all of their 787s to slow their spending.

Source: Chicago Sun Times by Dan Reed