Emirates boss Tim Clark fears Boeing 777X won’t hit the skies until 2026
Emirates’ boss expects the first of its 205 Boeing 777X aircraft to enter into service by 2026, extending delays on the long-anticipated programme, after the wide-body aircraft attains full certification at the end of 2025.
Boeing will face heightened regulatory scrutiny of its new wide-body jet and must ensure it gets it right, Tim Clark, Emirates’ president, told reporters on the sidelines of the Farnborough Airshow on Monday.
“The FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] will be doubly rigorous, in my view, on everything, probably rightly so, and Boeing beating themselves to make sure that they get it absolutely right. Nobody should be rushed and any remediation work that needs to be done should be done openly, transparently. And whatever time it takes to get everything sorted that comes up in the flight test programme, get that done.
“I don’t reckon [the plane] will be certified fully until the end of 2025 [and] in service for the likes of us … in 2026.”
The 777X is the industry’s biggest twin-engined plane, with about 400 seats, but its entry into service has been pushed back by five years due to problems including certification delays.
Boeing started certification flight testing of the 777-9 this month with US aviation regulators on board. The FAA authorised certification flights to begin, the first of which occurred on July 12 from Paine Field.
On Monday, Korean Air announced its intent to buy 20 of Boeing’s 777-9s to reach high-demand markets in Europe and North America, as well as popular regional routes within Asia, the plane maker said during the Farnborough event.
Mr Clark said Boeing has two problems to tackle on its long-delayed 777X programme. The first is to get the plane up and running, with strong performance on the engines and the supply chain.
The second issue is to step up the production rate from three aircraft a month in 2026 to five a month by 2028, he said.
“The first task is get it out of the door. The second task is … how are you going to build it in the contracted timelines?”
At the Dubai Airshow in November 2023, Emirates ordered 55 additional Boeing 777-9s and 35 777-8s, bringing the airline’s total 777X orders to 205.
The Dubai-based airline comprises less than half of Boeing’s 481 firm orders for the 777X wide-body.
“We will not take kindly to be pushed back by people who are coming in later in the programme … so that adds another layer of complexity for the people in Seattle,” Mr Clark said, referring to Korean Air’s planned 777X deliveries starting in 2028.
Engine testing
Emirates plans to test General Electric’s GE9X, the engine that powers the 777X, in Dubai during the summer of 2025, according to Mr Clark.
“In the summer of next year, we bring one of the aeroplanes across to Dubai, take it up to max take-off weight … and then stress-test the engine,” he said.
The benchmark for the test will be maximum take-off at 42°C and pressure altitude of 600 feet, which are “fairly challenging conditions … but it really works the engine to its maximum,” he said.
