Three's A Crowd: Lufthansa Takes Delivery Of Another Boeing 787

Simple Flying

By Linnea Ahlgren

Published Jan 19, 2023

The plane will be named after the port city of Kiel.

Photo: Boeing

German flag carrier Lufthansa has welcomed its third Boeing 787 Dreamliner to the fleet. Early in the morning of Thursday, January 19, D-ABPC touched down at Frankfurt Airport, having made the journey straight from the manufacturer's facilities in Everett, Washington, from where it took off at 13:23 local time the day before.The Boeing 787-9 joins D-ABPA and D-ABPB, delivered in August and October of last year. The two previous arrivals were named after the German cities of Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, respectively. Now, the turn has come for the port city of Kiel, on Germany's Baltic Sea Coast, to adorn the new jet with its name.

Changed carrier two times

All three Dreamliners delivered to Lufthansa thus far are over three years old. They were initially intended for other carriers. At first, they were constructed for China's Hainan Airlines. When not taken up, they were transferred instead to the order book of Vistara. However, that did not work out either (although Vistara now operates three Boeing 787-9s, with the latest delivery taking place in November last year), and as such, the orphaned jets found homes with Lufthansa instead.

The airline is expecting a whole host of Dreamliners to join its fleet, with total firm orders for 32 units of the jet. Lufthansa is also a launch customer for the much-awaited and much-delayed 777X, with an order for 20 of the 777-9 plus an additional order for seven of the 777-8 freighter version. The latter was added to the carrier's existing Boeing orders in May last year, along with seven additional 787-9s.

Unusually for European domestic routes, Lufthansa has deployed its Dreamliners on services between Munich and Frankfurt. There are plenty of opportunities to get yourself booked onto one for the next month and a half for some seldom-seen dual-aisle comfort on such a short hop.

Lufthansa Boeing 787-9 Landing In Frankfurt

Photo: Tom Boon I Simple Flying.

Deliveries picking up while production rate lags

Boeing has finally got Dreamliner deliveries up and running again. Quality control issues forced the planemaker to pause handing over 787s to airlines for much of the past two years. Deliveries were given the all-clear to resume in August last year, and the first Dreamliner in almost a year was handed over to American Airlines.

Boeing has previously stated that the production defects, along with the stop in deliveries, would cost the company close to $5.5 billion. Of these, $2 billion were associated with irregular manufacturing costs since it had to scale back production to avoid planes piling up once they rolled off the final assembly line.

While Boeing has not disclosed the exact current production rate, The Seattle Times states deliveries have hovered around a single new unit per month since they resumed. However, total Dreamliner deliveries for October and November were six per month.

Much of the slow production rate can be attributed to supply chain constrictions. Meanwhile, the manufacturer is optimistically targeting a production output of five new Dreamliners per month in 2023.