Some increasingly serious questions about the much delayed Boeing 787 Dreamliner are going unanswered.

So far Qantas, the largest airline customer for the ‘plastic fantastic’ jet, isn’t adding its voice to new concerns about the Dreamliner, but other carriers in recent days haven’t been so reticent.

Airlines in China and Mexico are expressing alarm that the super light weight high composite ‘game changer’ medium sized baked in an oven and assembled in three days twin engined wonder jet will not perform as promised when they placed their orders.

The silence from Qantas is interesting in that it has 65 firm orders for the Dreamliners plus options or purchase right for a further 50. This is eclipsed only by AIG group leasing company, ILFC, with 74 firm orders.

The jet was to have flown by the end of September 2007 according to statements made at the roll out of a faux prototype in July of that year, and to have been delivered to airlines from May 2008.

Qantas was to have received eight of its orders by December of 2008, all of which would have gone into service with Jetstar for international route expansions.

Not one material statement by Boeing or the supporting interviews by Boeing executives in relation to future flight testing, performance guarantees, or deliveries to customers since 2007 has as yet come true.

It is the longest run of worthless statements from an airline manufacturer in living memory, easily surpassing the stone walling that came from Airbus in 2005 when it became blindingly obvious to all and sundry that something had gone wrong with the A380 program and that the full story wasn’t being told.

Boeing’s current position is that the first Dreamliner will fly by 30 June this year, and that airline deliveries will begin in the second quarter of next year.

Plane Talking asked some questions of Qantas concerning the 787 order in the context of Qantas CEO Alan Joyce having already noted that the group is entitled to cancel its order under the terms of its contract because of delays, and Jetstar CEO Bruce Buchanan saying the aircraft couldn’t do Australia to the US mainland non-stop as intended.

Qantas has also received $292 million in liquidated damages from Boeing for the 787 delays which was booked in its accounts for the year to 30 June, 2008.

Is Qantas reviewing its orders for 787s in any way, ranging from cancellation in part of full or to the possible conversion of early -8 orders to -9s or later build -8s that would deliver the performance originally promised by Boeing?

Is Qantas reviewing the applicability of some of its earlier -8s to the originally announced deployments with Jetstar on non-stop routes to the US, in favour of one stop routes, or indeed elsewhere in the QF or JQ network?

Alan Joyce has noted that Qantas is entitled to cancel its 787 order. And Qantas has already received some compensation in the form of liquidated damages for 787 delays. So, is Qantas considering, or perhaps now ready to ask for, additional compensation from Boeing?

Is it true that the delays in the introduction of the 787 have adversely affected the modernisation of the Qantas fleet, and some important strategic initiatives that would have by now started to deliver significant benefits to the group, notwithstanding the current economic situation?

Has Qantas contemplated replacing all or part of its firm 787 orders with 777-300ER or -200LR jets? If it has, did it come to a negative or positive, or ‘let’s wait and see’ decision? If it hasn’t contemplated this course of action, is it likely to do so, or is it a case of it remaining a possibility that could be studied or developed further? Or is this notion stone dead?

Qantas considered these questions for more than 24 hours and then declined to make a formal reply to any of them. In fairness, if it was going to answer them it would only have done so in a press conference accompanied by a statement to the ASX, and after telling Boeing it was going public with its displeasure.

However the airline has recently indicated that it is committed to the 787 order, that it is keeping in close contact with Boeing (hardly surprising given a commitment worth at least $15 billion) and that it was ‘expecting’ deliveries to start in the second half of next year.

There doesn’t appear to be much hope for a Boeing 777 order in lieu of some of the smaller 787s at this stage. The 777-300ER and -200LR, the current versions of this jet, could transform the efficiency and reach of Qantas, and are being used to great effect by major competitors Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific and Emirates, and the -300ER version has just entered service with V Australia.

The 777 represents the missing of a huge opportunity by Qantas and a very bad fleet planning call.

The Boeing claim that the 787 will be deliverable by the second quarter of next year is implausible. The absurdly over hyped jet is also over weight and unable to perform the missions Qantas had envisaged for it in its early run of production. The ‘stretched’ -9 version, which is said to be undergoing major redesign and also running very late, also came with promises of being able to fly to Europe one-stop and mainland America non-stop.

If some certainty as to performance from the Dreamliners doesn’t emerge as the result of extensive flight testing by say October of this year, it is hard to imagine Qantas continuing to say, straight faced, that it remains committed to the program, which was supposed to take over everything from wide-bodied domestic services to long range secondary international flights in support of A380s on the trunk routes.

It will be game over for the jet Boeing called the ‘game changer.’