The Boeing Company (NYSE:BA) shares fell more than 3% in pre-market trading Friday after the commercial airline maker revealed that it has temporarily halted deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner jets over a documentation issue related to a fuselage component.
Boeing stated on Thursday it “discovered an analysis error by our supplier related to the 787 forward pressure bulkhead.”
The component, supplied by Spirit AeroSystems, acts as a barrier between the pressurized interior cabin and the radome (or nose cone), according to a report from Reuters.
At least one Wall Street analyst said the latest setback in 787 deliveries should not result in any design changes and jets in service should continue to fly.
“Our understanding is that the error is a ‘non-compliance’ with FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) documentation requirements and not a ‘nonconformance’ with a manufacturing specification,” Cowen analyst Cai von Rumohr wrote in a note.
Production of the 787 has experienced delays as Boeing deals with supply and labor shortages.
Earlier this month, Spirit announced that the process of retrofitting stored fuselages for the 787 jets was taking longer than expected.
Reuters also reported that the current issue is unrelated to a previous quality problem involving gaps around the forward pressure bulkhead, which was discovered by the FAA in 2021 and contributed to a delivery stoppage that lasted until August 2022.
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