Business FYI: Boeing 787 Passes Fuselage Stress Tests
Boeing Co. said Thursday that stress tests performed on the fuselage barrel of the twice-delayed 787 Dreamliner were successful, bringing the new aircraft another step toward flight certification.
The testing began late last year and was completed this week, Chicago-based Boeing said in a statement.
The 787 uses light carbon-fiber construction in its wings and fuselage instead of traditional aluminum.
The jetliner is about eight months behind schedule because of problems with unfinished parts from suppliers. Boeing now expects to deliver the first jet in early 2009.
The company said engineers put the barrel design through a series of incremental tests, successfully taking the section to 150 percent of limit load, known as “ultimate load,” the level required for certification.
When the composite section was pushed “well beyond” the ultimate load, which is more than 2-1/2 times the force of gravity, “testers observed audible indications of damage,” Boeing said. “The piece did not reach the level of destruction that had been anticipated.”
Components for the 787 are being manufactured in Tulsa by Wichita-based Spirit AeroSystems Inc.
Honeywell moving aerospace jobs overseas
Honeywell International Inc., the world’s largest maker of aircraft controls, will eliminate about 620 aerospace jobs in Phoenix and Montreal and move most of those positions overseas to cut costs.
The company will trim its work force by about 420 people in Phoenix, primarily from facilities that make aircraft controls, communication and navigation products for commercial planes, said Bill Reavis, spokesman Honeywell. Those jobs will be moved to Indonesia and Malaysia in the next 18 to 24 months, he said.
About 200 jobs will be moved to other facilities from Montreal, where Honeywell repairs auxiliary power units and fuel controls.
Rising fuel costs are forcing older aircraft out of service, leading to declining work in Montreal, Reavis said. Orders also fell when the U.S. Air Force ended a service contract, choosing to do the work internally.
Some of the Montreal jobs will go to Prince Edward Island, a province located off the eastern coast of Canada, he said.
The aerospace unit, which contributed 35 percent of 2007 sales at Morris Township, N.J.-based Honeywell, employs 40,000 people around the world, including 12,600 in Phoenix.
Sears cuts Restoration Hardware bid price
Sears Holding Corp. revised its acquisition proposal Thursday for Restoration Hardware Inc. to $4.55 a share from a previous offer of $6.75 a share.
In a letter sent to the special committee of Restoration Hardware’s board, Sears also offered a reverse breakup fee in an amount that was $5 million greater than the reverse breakup fee Restoration agreed in its merger agreement with private-equity firm Catterton Partners.
Sears said it would like schedule a meeting with Restoration Hardware’s management next week.
In the letter, which was disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Sears asked Restoration Hardware’s board to consider the “execution risk” posed by Catterton Partners.
Sears first offered in December to buy Restoration, a Corte Madera, Calif., home furnishings retailer, for $6.75 a share, after Restoration agreed in November to be acquired by Catterton Partners for $6.70 a share. Catterton later cut the price to $4.50 a share amid skepticism that a deal could be done.
Shares of Restoration Hardware closed Thursday at $4.30. Sears shares closed at $101.40.
Sears currently owns a 13.6 percent stake in Restoration Hardware.
Originally published by Bloomberg AP and Staff Reports.
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