ANA will receive four additional copies of the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner after adjusting their 55 plane order, the Tokyo-based airline announced Tuesday.
The four 787-8’s which were set for delivery to ANA in fiscal year 2013 will be switched to the larger -9 variant. The total number of planes remains at 55, only the split changes: 36 787-8’s and 19 787-9’s.
ANA, Boeing’s 787 launch customer, has already taken delivery of seven 787-8 jets, and expects to receive 14 more by the end of March 2013. Long-haul routes include Tokyo Haneda-Frankfurt, with links from Tokyo to Seattle, San Jose and Myanmar coming online later this year.
Boeing has previously said that it expects to begin 787-9 test flights in 2013, and that launch customer Air New Zealand should receive their first -9 in “early 2014.” As the first 787-9 has not yet been built,
Depending on how soon Boeing builds, tests and begins delivering the new 787-9, the order swap seems to indicate that it is possible that ANA will not receive any 787s in fiscal year 2013, which stretches from March-to-March.
