Mitsubishi Heavy Delivers Fuselage Panels for First Boeing 777X

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has delivered aft fuselage panels for the first Boeing 777X, next-generation wide-body passenger aircraft.

The panels were shipped from MHI's Hiroshima Machinery Works Eba Plant. Based on the development and supply contract concluded in July 2015, MHI is responsible for similar structural components for the current 777 series, manufacturing the panels of aft and tail fuselages, and passenger doors, the company said in a statement Wednesday.

The Eba Plant, which formerly had been a steelworks factory, was renovated for aero-structures production with proprietary automated production lines developed by MHI. For the 777X, MHI introduced new specially-developed equipment for component manufacturing, and also aggregated various production processes that previously had been spread across several locations, utilizing integrated processing to shorten lead-times and eliminating other bottlenecks in the previous workflow.

Delivery of the first 777X airplane to airlines is scheduled for 2020.