NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.–Wiring problems on the first test aircraft of the Air Force’s KC-46A aerial refueling tanker program has forced the service to delay the initial flight by months, the senior officer overseeing the program said Tuesday.
The first flight of the Boeing [BA]-built aircraft had been expected to fly over the summer but that will now not take place until November, Maj. Gen. John Thompson, the program executive officer of the KC-46A, said at the Air Force Association’s Air & Space conference held just outside Washington.
The flight of the second aircraft, which will represent the first of the KC-46As, has been pushed back from late this year into April, he said.
Thompson told reporters the program had a good amount of scheduling margin built into it to account for possible problems, but warned that extra space is shrinking.
“A lot of that schedule margin has been chewed up,” he said. He said staying on schedule and getting the aircraft flying “is absolutely critical to the program.”
The problem stems from the installation of wiring bundles by Boeing, a problem the company revealed in August when it said during its quarterly earnings report that it was forced to eat a $272-million charge for the mistake.
Thompson detailed the errors on Wednesday, saying the wiring bundles for system redundancy were improperly installed too close to each other and were not compliant with Federal Aviation Administration and military standards.
Of the roughly 1,700 bundles, 350 of the have to be ripped out and reinstalled, he said, adding the problem is having a six-month impact on the program. Similar work has to be done on the second aircraft but on a much smaller scale, he said.