A Royal Jordanian Dreamliner is parked at Boeing Co.'s manufacturing campus in North Charleston on Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026. Boeing is building eight Dreamliners per month at the factory, with plans to expand production over the coming year. (Photo by David Wren/South Carolina Gazette)
NORTH CHARLESTON — Boeing Co. is stabilizing production at its 787 Dreamliner plant here, both in numbers and quality, even as it embarks on a $1 billion plan to expand the site’s manufacturing capacity.
Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s president and CEO, said Tuesday the aerospace giant is building eight 787 wide-body jets per month — up from five a year ago — and will increase production to 10 per month over the next year.
Increases beyond that will take place at a second assembly building under construction at Boeing’s campus off International Boulevard. That project, which will add 1,000 jobs to the plant’s workforce of more than 8,200 people, broke ground in November and is scheduled for completion in 2027.
“I’m pleased with the operational metrics we’re seeing in the (Dreamliner) factory,” Ortberg said during an earnings call with analysts.
Boeing beat Wall Street’s financial expectations, prompting Ortberg to say the aerospace firm is making progress toward returning “to the iconic company we all know it can be” following years of production problems and the 737 Max scandal.
In addition to making more 787s, the factory off International Boulevard is clamping down on mistakes.
Ortberg said the plane-maker reduced the average number of rework hours – the time it takes to fix manufacturing errors once a jet has left final assembly — by nearly 30% in 2025. Rework issues have been a persistent problem for the Dreamliner program over the years, eating into profitability.
“Going forward … we’ll use the same disciplined processes, including monitoring our KPIs (key performance indicators), to assess readiness for the next planned rate increase to 10 airplanes per month, which is also targeted for later this year.” Ortberg said.
Boeing is coming off a year in which it delivered 88 Lowcountry-built Dreamliners to customers. Jay Malave, the company’s chief financial officer, said deliveries of the wide-body jet will total between 90 and 100 this year.
“Overall, we expect (commercial airplane) deliveries to be up close to 10%” across all of Boeing’s single-aisle and wide-body programs, he said during the earnings call.
Airlines worldwide will need more than 7,800 wide-body jets like the Dreamliner over the next two decades, both for fleet additions and to replace aging planes, according to Boeing’s latest commercial market outlook.
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That would be an 89.5% increase in the number of those big jets in global fleets.
“We continue to see strong demand for the 787 Dreamliner family and its market-leading efficiency and versatility,” Stephanie Pope, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in a written statement during the plant expansion’s groundbreaking.
The Dreamliner factory update came as Boeing reported earnings that far outpaced analysts’ expectations.
Boeing said it had fourth-quarter revenues of $9.92 per share on sales totaling $23.9 billion – a 57% increase from the same period a year ago. Wall Street was expecting a 44 cents-per-share loss on sales of $22.6 billion.
Net income totaled $8.22 billion in the fourth quarter, up from a nearly $4 billion loss a year ago.
The fourth-quarter numbers were helped by Boeing’s sale of its Digital Aviation Solutions business. Not counting that sale, Boeing would have lost about $2 per share during the quarter.
All told, Boeing delivered 600 airplanes to customers in 2025 — nearly twice the number from the previous year and the most since 2018. The company also notched 1,173 airplane orders last year, including 381 for the Dreamliner.
France-based Airbus, Boeing’s biggest competitor, delivered 793 planes and took orders for 889 more, by comparison.
Boeing now has a production backlog of 6,130 planes, including 1,026 Dreamliners.
