Not just yet, it seems

Bloomberg.com as a story by Susanna Ray about the delayed-again Boeing 787:

Boeing Co. said the 787 Dreamliner won’t reach customers until the first quarter of 2010, almost two years behind schedule and the fourth delay for the best- selling new aircraft in the planemaker’s history. The jet won’t fly for the first time until next year’s second quarter, in part because factories were idled for eight weeks by a machinists’ strike and some fasteners had to be replaced, Boeing said today. The company also shifted managers and created a new position to monitor operations by suppliers, who were blamed for previous delays.
Pat Shanahan, tapped as the 787’s manager last year to get the program under control, was placed in charge of all commercial planes. He replaces Carolyn Corvi, who will retire, with an expanded position. Scott Fancher will direct the Dreamliner’s development and report to Shanahan, Boeing said. The 787, unveiled in July 2007, was due to enter service with All Nippon Airways Co. in May this year after Boeing’s shortest-ever flight-test program, arriving as airlines clamored for more-efficient planes to counter higher fuel prices. The Dreamliner has instead been beset by parts shortages, incomplete work from with suppliers and the recent strike, setting Boeing further behind in its goal of surpassing Airbus SAS.
“It’s like deja vu, all these things coming back to haunt us: fasteners, flight-testing concerns and further delivery delays,” Rob Stallard, an analyst at Macquarie Research Equities in New York, said.
Boeing has orders from 58 customers for 895 Dreamliners valued at about $155 billion. The most recent goal was to fly by the end of this year and ship the planes in the third quarter of 2009. Boeing is still revising the delivery schedule for customers and will disclose the financial impact later. The company is still planning on a nine-month flight-test program, its most ambitious ever, and expects to ramp up to building ten Dreamliners a month in 2012, just later that year than originally expected.
The planemaker is using new carbon composites instead of aluminum in much of the 787, adding a wrinkle in an already new manufacturing process. Suppliers in the US, Italy, and Japan are supposed to build 70 percent of the plane and ship completed sections to Boeing’s Everett, Washington, factory for assembly. The different languages and time zones hampered communication and stymied Boeing’s ability to fix problems that cropped up. “This program now has reached a level of delays and things going wrong that are really frustrating and beyond expectations” for both observers and long-time Boeing engineers, said Joseph Campbell, an analyst with Barclay’s Plc in New York. “It’s out of character for Boeing. Normally Boeing prides itself on being on-time and will overrun its budget in order to be on time.”
While Airbus has also suffered program delays, the Toulouse, France-based company’s 525-seat A380 superjumbo successfully completed a test flight three months after its roll-out and encountered problems only once it entered production. In contrast, the Dreamliner’s first flight was originally targeted for August 2007. Boeing began telling customers this week of the new setback and will give them revised delivery dates by the end of the year.
The first customer, Japan’s All Nippon, said in September that Boeing had told it before the strike to expect the plane in August of 2009, which would have been 15 months later than the original target. Japan Airlines Corp., due to be the 787’s second operator, said earlier today that it was informed of an additional six-month delay but hasn’t yet been given a new delivery date. “In spite of any delay, we continue to believe that our plan to purchase 787s is the right decision for our fleet renewal and replacement program,” said Andy Backover, a spokesman at American Airlines’ Fort Worth, Texas, headquarters. Boeing hasn’t yet told the AMR Corp. unit what the specific impact will be to its 42-plane order, he said. The first delivery was scheduled for September of 2012. Only one carrier so far has canceled a Dreamliner order. Azerbaijan Airlines in August substituted a 767 for one of its three 787s on order.
Boeing previously had said that a 57-day strike by the machinists, its largest union, over wages and job security would generate at least a day-for-day delay in all its programs. The strike ended 2 November and cost the company about $10 million a day in lost profit during the third quarter. Other new and existing models are also being delayed as workers focus on the 787 and problems discovered in recent months with faulty parts called nutplates that must now be replaced.

Rico says 'nutplates' are the unions striking for 57 days; you won't have job security, much less higher wages, if nobody's buying the damn planes...