787 First Flight Video Dreamliner

787 First Flight Video
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MONTREAL ­ It’s not only Boeing Co. executives who will hold their breath Tuesday, on the day their infamously late 787 Dreamliner finally takes to the skies for the 787 First Flight.

Christian Sauvé will, too. The general manager of Laval’s RTI Claro said that his company holds the contract to make “100 per cent” of the 787’s seat-tracks, rails that hold passengers’ seats anchored to the floor. That’s a major deal for RTI Claro, which now employs about 250 people, and a hefty part of its fortunes are riding along with Boeing’s test pilots.


For one thing, Sauvé will finally proceed with the hiring that he put on hold for two long years, as Boeing grappled with delay after delay for the 787 First Flight.


And the same applies to other Quebec aerospace suppliers, who will heave a sigh of relief after a successful first flight.


Pierre Ayotte, managing director of Mecachrome Canada in Mirabel, said that his company will also take on additonal staff, but that it would take a while.


“We await with great impatience the establishment of a sustained production rate for the (787) program,” Ayotte said.

Mecachrome makes various structural components for the Dreamliner, the most important of which are the titanium door-frames for cargo and passenger doors.


“Our parts need to be in place at the beginning of the assembly process, so we’ve already done a lot of work,” he noted. “But things are stabilizing and we will hire when production rates (of the 787) warrant it. That will be the crucial test for us.”


For RTI Claro, the 787 program represents a lot of work over the long term. Early on, Dreamliner sales soared, but its repeated delays forced many airlines to cancel about 80 orders. But it still has about 840 orders on its books, and Sauvé said that “we already have the order schedule from Boeing, so we’ve started the work quite a while ago.”


For Mécachrome, the six door-frames per airplane it will supply means that with the current orders, it will produce more than 5,000 frames. But both Ayotte and Sauvé couldn’t say how many additional workers they might need, nor when.


The 787 First Flight prototype is scheduled for 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time (1 p.m. EST) at Paine Field in Everett, Wash.


“It’s a great day,” Sauvé said. “We’re running late, we should have hired people earlier, but the delays made that impossible. But that’s in the past now.”


Even if there’s a hitch today, he added, the program is “well and truly on its way.”