ETHIOPIAN TAKES DELIVERY OF THEIR SECOND B787 DREAMLINER
Only days after having to make an unscheduled engine change on the airline’s first B787 Dreamliner, did number two of 10 on order arrive in Addis Ababa yesterday, a regular source close to the airline in Addis Ababa confirmed. Three more B787’s are due to be delivered in coming months, boosting Ethiopian’s ability to expand their network, using the world’s most advanced passenger aircraft presently on the market. The Dreamliners will according to the same source be deployed on routes to Asia, Europe and the US. ET was Africa’s first airline to receive the new bird after years of delay caused by production problems at Boeing, but the refusal this week by Qatar Airways to accept delivery of any of their ordered 60 B787’s until engine issues were sufficiently addressed, has cast more doubt on the speed of deliveries. General Electric followed up on the engine troubles with an airworthiness directive for the GEnx to carry out a borescope inspection on all engines presently in use for the LPT nozzles while conducting an in-house review on the fanshaft, which reportedly had suffered a fracture during a ground test on a new B787 still at the Boeing assembly plant in South Carolina.
Happy Landings to Ethiopian’s latest ‘bird’, crews and passengers.
