There was an earnings conference call by Boeing overnight that broke more bad news about its 787 Dreamliner project.

The computer modelling relied upon in the design failed to predict the behaviour of a section of the wing where it joins the main body of the airliner. The company now has to reconsider the application of those models to other parts of the design.

This is, in effect, an admission that the entire design is suspect to the extent that assumptions made about how sections of it will behave under aerodynamic loads may be incorrect.

This wing root failure occurred during a static stress test in May as part of the certification program for the jet, which was to have flown by late September 2007 after the prototype, now known to have been a faked up shell with a plywood door and hardware shop rivets holding the main body together, was rolled out on 8 July of that year with first deliveries promised to airlines starting in May 2008.

Boeing “thinks” it knows how to fix the issue, as described in words and diagrams in this story in The Seattle Times, which was on the streets before the conference call.

So it is going to “pre-test” the fix, before testing it, and then if that works, apply it to the small fleet of test flight 787s already substantially assembled, unfortunately with the critical part that failed, at Everett near Seattle.

This means that the 787 flight test program will not see first takeoff until sometime next year, if nothing more goes wrong. It means the 787 cannot enter service until sometime in 2011, and that the commitment to Qantas, to start delivering 787-9s, the second model in the Dreamliner series from mid 2013 is going to be dishonoured.

(Qantas has 50 Dreamliners on firm order following its recent cancellation of 15 of the jets that were supposed to be in service with Jetstar by now.)

Incredibly, sources in Boeing are being quoted in the US media as saying a ‘hot spot’ or problem area in the wing root design was identified by the computer models used yet ignored at the outset.

If true, this is the second time Boeing has done this to the 787. Its computer design tools identified a potential problem in the wing box area also early in the program which was then ignored until that component suffered ‘premature deformation’ and had to be redesigned and reinforced.

It is though there is an insistence on keeping to fictional parameters for component weight and load bearing capabilities in the plastics used no matter what the real limitations are of sheets of reinforced carbon fibre that are glued together with resins and then baked in a giant oven to form critical sections of the air frame.

The Dreamliner 787 is now in limbo. A family of jets for which there is no first flight date, no flight testing and certification schedule, and no performance parameters for the airlines that ordered them to fly non-stop for incredible distances or save 20% in fuel burn or 30% in maintenance costs.

All of the crucial assumptions about the efficiencies supposed to be inherent in the use of high composite structures in flexible load bearing areas of the jet have so far failed to become reality.

Several days after Boeing insisted the prototype would fly by 30 June, it called it off, citing a minor fix, palm of the hand sized stuff, that needed to be applied to a ‘side of body area.’ It could not bring itself to admit that it was a wing failure.

It is now apparent that the prototype 787 is unsafe to fly without whatever modification Boeing finally pre-tests, tests and then retro fits.

How it could have reached a situation where it was assembled and ready to go with a wing that could fail in a sudden gust loading or abrupt turn remains the most embarrassing mystery in the history of jet airliner development?

This project is at risk. Its management is a lying disgrace.