LE BOURGET, France — After years of setbacks, Boeing says the newest members of its 777X family are on track to enter the market this decade.

Justin Hale, Boeing’s customer lead for those new family members, laid out the anticipated timeline at the Paris Air Show, standing inside a mock cabin of the new widebody plane with reporters scattered in the passenger seats.

First, the 777-9, set to become Boeing’s largest widebody on the market, would enter service next year, Hale said. Then, the new 777-8 freighter would launch in 2028. Finally, the smaller passenger variant, 777-8, would enter service “toward the end of the decade.”

That timeline has been years in the making and pushed back several times. Boeing unveiled the new 777X family more than a decade ago and has yet to receive certification from the Federal Aviation Administration to fly passengers.

The new plane has been stymied by manufacturing defects and heightened regulatory scrutiny following two 737 Max crashes in 2018 and 2019. Those crashes, largely caused by an error in a new software system on the Max, revealed a lack of oversight by the safety regulator as it was considering Boeing’s new model. The Department of Justice later accused Boeing of misleading the FAA about the new software system.

With the Max crashes hanging over Boeing and the FAA, the first of the 777X family, the 777-9, was stuck in unofficial test flights for four years.

Now, Boeing is optimistic that it is nearing the finish line. The company said it found a solution to the latest manufacturing defect that halted test flights last year. And, it is “encouraged with the new FAA leadership,” Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said in an interview with trade publication Aviation Week ahead of the Paris Air Show.

Ortberg said Boeing and regulators need to “work together to streamline” the certification process. “It has gotten way too elongated,” he continued, adding that “we’ve seen progress.”

“But there’s still a lot of work to do, particularly on the 777X, to get that certification complete,” Ortberg said. “That’s going to be a continued focus for us for the rest of the year.”

Boeing’s customers are also starting to believe the timeline. John Plueger, CEO of aircraft lessor Air Lease, said in an interview at the air show that “absent any other major findings,” he agrees with Ortberg that the 777X could be entering service next year.

The largest launch in ‘aviation history’

Boeing officially introduced the 777X in 2013 at the Dubai Air Show . The new widebody plane generated so much customer interest that Boeing’s CEO at the time, James McNerney, said it was “part of the largest commercial launch in aviation history.”

The 777X family is an upgraded version of Boeing’s 777 twinjet, which debuted in the mid-1990s.

It is larger and more fuel-efficient than other widebodies on the market, Boeing says, featuring wings so long that Boeing added foldable wingtips to allow the plane to fit into airports.

The plane is powered by the largest jet engines ever built.

Boeing started production for the 777X in Everett in 2017, matching the expectation it outlined when it debuted the plane in Dubai. But it faced years of production delays and quality concerns .

The 777X, now commonly used to refer to the 777-9, started flying in 2020 but the FAA didn’t grant approval to officially start test flights, with the regulator in the cockpit, until July 2024 .

That approval marked a significant step forward for the long-delayed plane, but roughly one month later, Boeing faced another setback. After one of the test planes landed in Hawaii, inspectors found a crack in a structural component that connects the plane’s engine to the airframe.

In inspections of two other active 777X test planes, Boeing found similar cracks.

Fixing the thrust link

The cracks had appeared in the thrust link, a titanium structure that transfers the thrust load from the engine to the airframe.

Because the 777X was so much larger than Boeing’s other planes, it required a larger thrust link than Boeing had ever built, the company said in a May blog post . That meant it could show some “unique behaviors,” Tresha Lacaux, the 777-9 chief project engineer, said in the post.

After analysis in an Everett research center and more flight testing, Boeing determined that the cracks occurred when there was only a narrow gap for airflow between the thrust link and a nearby cooling port. That led to the thrust link vibrating and cracking.

To test their theory, Boeing engineers used leaf blowers to simulate high-speed airflow.

As a fix, Boeing’s engineering team developed straps to secure blankets that were near the thrust link and ensure enough room for air to flow through the machine.

The company also plans to close the cooling port near the left-side thrust link and increase the thickness of the titanium part by two-hundredths of an inch to further reduce the likelihood of vibration.

Since then, the “thrust links have performed without issue,” Anita Rudack, the 777-9 deputy chief project engineer, said in the company blog post.

The new family

In the long lead-up to launch, Boeing has secured 535 orders for the 777X family from 14 airlines, Hale said Wednesday at the Air Show.

Hale said the 777-8 will enter service just as the 777-300ER fleet, which Boeing first flew in 2003, is nearing retirement, calling it “ideally timed” to fill that need. The 777-8 is 3 meters shorter than that plane, but Hale said Boeing moved the location of doors to slightly increase the number of seats in the new plane.

The 777-9, meanwhile, will be a “growth” plane, Hale continued. It is 3 meters longer than 777-300 ER, with room for 30 more passengers.

Standing in the mock cabin on display at the Air Show, Hale introduced some of the interior features that, he says, make the new plane a “flagship experience” for flyers. The cabin is 4 inches wider, with wider seats, and has concave stow bins for luggage, giving it a more spacious feeling. The windows are placed higher on the sidewall to align passengers’ view with the horizon and give more middle-seat travelers a sense of what’s outside.

“For our customers, this is a canvas that they can work with,” Hale said.

The freighter, meanwhile, will replace the aging 747 cargo variant, which is nearing retirement, Hale said. Compared to the 777-200 freighter that is in service today, the new 777 variant would be 7 meters longer, accommodating up to seven more pallets of cargo.

Further delays ‘only hurt’

While confident in its certification, Plueger from Air Lease said he doesn’t have any 777X planes on his order book. The customer base is still too narrow.

“When I order an aircraft, especially a widebody, it’s pretty easy to place that aircraft when it’s brand new,” Plueger said. “The question we always have to ask ourselves is after the first 10-, 12-year lease, who is going to take that airplane as a used aircraft from that point?”

“We still would like to see a little bit of an expansion of that overall customer base.”

Similarly, Air Lease doesn’t have any orders for Boeing’s two other, yet-to-be-certified planes — the 737 Max 7 and 737 Max 10 — because it doesn’t see a big enough customer base for those specific variants.

Ortberg has said Boeing is hoping to get those certifications this year.

Plueger, though confident in Boeing’s trajectory, said that any further delays “only hurt. They don’t help.”

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