Subscription Required
Open to All Readers
By Scott Hamilton
Background to a new series
May 3, 2026, © Leeham News: Boeing has more than 30 777-9s built and stored at the Everett (WA) Paine Field, where the 777s are assembled.
Some have been stored since 2020. Years of testing, fixing, and certification delays pushed the anticipated delivery to next year. However, every stored aircraft must undergo change incorporation first to meet the standards required by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which involves years of scrutiny, system updates, and fixes identified in testing.
Beginning tomorrow, LNA will publish a five-part series on incorporating change. Boeing has received a lot of publicity about this practice since the March 2019 grounding of the 737 MAX, the early 787s that were rife with design and production issues, and the suspension of 787 deliveries beginning in October 2020. These programs had unprecedented levels of change incorporation required.
However, the process isn’t new, and Boeing learned a lot over the decades. LNA describes the evolution of change incorporation since the Boeing 767 program. The 767 was originally designed as a three-crew cockpit. A few airplanes were produced in this configuration. After the FAA approved operation by two-person crews, Boeing had to change these airplanes from three- to two-person cockpits and change those in production.
LNA recounts change incorporation for the 767, 747-400, 777 Classic, 787, and the 777X.
CEO Kelly Ortberg, responding to a question on the 1Q2026 earnings call, gave a high-level outline of what Boeing faces with the 777X.
Change incorporation before delivery
More than 30 Boeing 777-9s are stored today. This Google Earth photo of Paine Field, Everett (WA), shows many of them. These are distinguishable by the green fuselage and white wings.
“Change incorporation is basically for the airplanes that we have built, [we must] incorporate all the changes that have happened since they’ve been built. Things that result from the certification program, and things that happen as a result of productivity improvements or process improvements,” Ortberg said. “We go back in, and we incorporate all those changes before we make the delivery. It is a pretty massive activity that we have underway.”
Ortberg said that there is a dedicated team within BCA focused specifically on incorporating changes into the airplanes. Boeing has roughly 30 777s that’ll go through this change incorporation process over several years.
“It depends on when the airplane was built,” Ortberg continued. “The older the airplane, the more change incorporation and the more structural-related changes that are needed, and they’ll take longer. The newer the airplane, it’s likely more minor upgrades. Each airplane has a different change incorporation work scope. That’s what the team is doing right now, going through defining the statement of work.”
Ortberg said that Boeing will bring all the airplanes down to a common configuration level and then incorporate the changes. “We think that’s going to be the most efficient way. This isn’t new. This is something we’ve always planned. It’s a part of the production process. Unfortunately, when you build the airplanes early to get all the learning, in order to make the final delivery, we have to bring them all up to the latest configuration. It’s in our operating plan, and we’re in the early stages of that change incorporation effort.”
LNA specifically details this last description in its series.
No details or time-per-airplane
Ortberg didn’t detail the types of changes required to move from one spectrum to the other. Nor did he say how long the changes will take per airplane. LNA notes that Ortberg said the work scope statement is still being defined on a per-airplane basis.
The change incorporation for the gaps between fuselage barrels on the 787, discovered in 2020, took 3-4 months per airplane. Changes to the MAXes took “longer than it took to build them,” former CEO David Calhoun said, without being more precise. Before the MAX crisis began, it took about 10 days to assemble a 737.
LNA’s series will be behind the paywall.
Related
