The delivery of Boeing’s first 747-8 Freighter to launch customer Cargolux, scheduled for Monday 19 September, has been suspended. The carrier is reported to have withdrawn its personnel from Boeing’s plant, and a Boeing spokesman has been quoted as saying: ““We have unresolved issues between ourselves and Cargolux. We are working with our customer to determine a date for delivery.”
At this point, neither Cargolux nor Boeing is commenting publicly on the nature of those “unresolved issues,” although Flight Global said the problem “is understood to center on the 747-8F’s non-compliance with contractual guarantees, suggesting that it is connected in some way to the performance issues.”
We will update this blog as we learn more.
LX-VCB, seen here lifting off for this flight, completed a fairly standard pattern of a round-robin to Grant County/Moses Lake and back.
We’ll keep you updated.
LX-VCB, seen here lifting off for this flight, completed a fairly standard pattern of a round-robin to Grant County/Moses Lake and back.
We’ll keep you updated.
LX-VCB, seen here lifting off for this flight, completed a fairly standard pattern of a round-robin to Grant County/Moses Lake and back.
We’ll keep you updated.
The latest speculation (published in Flight Global) is that the dispute is not really linked to any performance shortfall in the 747-8F, but rather to Qatar Airways dissatisfaction with compensation for late delivery of the 787s it ordered from Boeing. Flight Global cites industry sources as saying the 747-8F performance issues have been well known for at least a year, and that Boeing and Cargolux had already agreed on a compensation package.
However, when Qatar took a 35% stake in Cargolux, and a seat on the Board, the equation changed and, according to the report, the rejection of the first two freighters is being used as a bargaining chip in the Qatar/Boeing dispute.
Updating this item: Cargolux released the following announcement a few minutes ago:
Luxembourg, 7 October 2011. Cargolux announced today that Management informed its Board of Directors of progress achieved in the negotiations over contractual issues in respect of the delivery of the first two Boeing 747-8 Freighters initially scheduled for 19 and 21 September 2011.
Discussions over these issues will continue over the weekend. The Company will provide an update as soon as an agreement has been reached.