Lufthansa Joins Emirates in Rejecting Early-Build 777-9s

Boeing’s 777X program has run into a new customer problem.  Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr confirmed the airline is preparing to reject some of the early-built 777-9 aircraft allocated to it, following Emirates, which already refused the first 10 777-9s built for its fleet. The move highlights a growing rift between Boeing and its wide body launch customers over airframes that were assembled years before the aircraft was actually certified.

The Backstory

Boeing built roughly 30 777-9s between 2019 and 2021, well ahead of the type’s eventual certification, in what was effectively a bet that flight testing and regulatory approval would wrap up on the original schedule. It didn’t. Years of delays — including a redesign after a 2021 ground test failure and a prolonged FAA certification process

— left those airframes sitting in storage while the production standard 777-9 kept moving.

The result is the early-build aircraft have fallen behind newer airframes in terms of software and other updates, making them less economical to operate relative to aircraft built closer to the final certified configuration. For airlines paying for a next-generation wide body, taking delivery of a jet that’s effectively already outdated is a hard sell. As reported by TAC, one has already been set for disassembly.