How much more delay the Boeing 777X can handle?

Certification and first deliveries of the Boeing 777X are likely to slip by another year until late 2024 and 2025 respectively, The Air Current reported on April 21, quoting sources who prefer to remain anonymous. Reuters confirmed the story and is also quoting an anonymous source. We have to wait until coming Wednesday and Boeing’s Q1 earnings release for any official news, but if confirmed it begs the question: how much more delay the Boeing 777X can handle?

Slipping the certification date by a year to 2024, with first deliveries unlikely before 2025 is another setback for the 777X program. Launched at the 2013 Dubai Airshow with huge orders from Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar Airways, the prototype 777-9 made its first flight only on January 25, 2020. The program was already behind schedule and the first deliveries in 2020 to Emirates

were no longer viable. In January 2021, Boeing said it would delay certification to late 2023, citing the revised market situation with the effects of the Covid crisis on long-haul travel and requirements from regulators like the FAA and EASA to redesign some parts of the aircraft. This included software and hardware of the  Actuator Control Electronics (ACE) and the Flight Control Systems (FCS).

At last November’s Dubai Airshow, Mike Fleming, Senior Vice President for the MAX and commercial customer support, said in a briefing that updates to the FCS are constantly being made. At the same time, Fleming and Tom Sanderson, Director of Product Marketing, said that progress had been made and the 777X was on schedule for its late 2023 certification. But they quickly added that the decision to enter Type Inspection Authorization (TIA) and the certification phase was up for the FAA to decide.