New York: Boeing has announced another delay in the development of the 787 Dreamliner saying that earliest deliveries will now be made sometime late next year. The latest announcement puts the plane more than a year behind its original schedule.

Initial deliveries to launch customer All Nippon Airways (ANA) had been planned for May this year. In January, however, the delivery date was altered to early 2009.

ANA has 50 Dreamliners on order.

The first test flight of the aircraft has also been pushed back to the fourth quarter of this year instead of later in the current quarter.

Boeing also said that it would deliver only 25 planes next year, less than a quarter of the number originally planned.

Boeing has attributed the delay to "slower than expected completion of work that traveled from supplier facilities into Boeing's final assembly line, unanticipated rework, and the addition of margin into the testing schedule."

Boeing stressed that they now have the situation under control.

"Over the past few months, we have taken strong actions to confront and overcome start-up issues on the programme, and we have made solid progress," Scott Carson, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in the statement. "Nevertheless, the traveled work situation and some unanticipated rework have prevented us from hitting the milestones we laid out in January. Our revised schedule is built upon an achievable, high-confidence plan for getting us to our power-on and first-flight milestones. Also, while the fundamental technologies and design of the 787 remain sound, we have inserted some additional schedule margin for dealing with other issues we may uncover in testing prior to first flight and in the flight test program."

"We deeply regret the disruption and disappointment these changes will cause for our customers, and we will work closely with each of them to minimize the impact," Carson added.