With ‘massive’ rework challenge looming, Boeing quietly scrapped a 777X

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For six years, a hulking, green Boeing 777-9 airframe sat dormant at an airfield north of Seattle, weighted blocks dangling from its wings in place of engines and black covers over missing fairings and open panels. 

In 2025, the jet quietly disappeared.

The seventh 777-9 built by Boeing, dubbed WH007, left the Everett, Washington factory to little fanfare in the summer of 2019. Folded winglets painted in the colors of Emirates, the carrier that pushed harder than any other for the 777X to exist, hinted at its expected future. The massive twin jet, however, was far from ready for service.

The 400-seat airplane never flew and never moved faster than a snail’s pace on the ground as Boeing towed it from one corner of Paine Field to make room for other unfinished 777-9s taking over the Everett airport’s taxiways and aprons.

While the precise timing of WH007’s demise is known only to a few inside Boeing, the 251-foot-long jetliner was disassembled in the late summer of 2025, people close to the matter told The Air Current. On Oct. 29, Boeing surprised analysts with a $4.9 billion reach-forward loss on the 777X program, citing a new delay that would push its commercial debut into 2027 along with costs for so-called “change incorporation” to make already-built aircraft airworthy.

In response to TAC queries, Boeing confirmed it scrapped one of its “partially assembled” 777-9s. “Our prior financial results accounted for this change incorporation effort and our decision to not complete an early 777-9,” the company said in a statement. Boeing acknowledged including the abandoned jet in the roughly $15 billion in accounting charges it has taken for the 777X program, but didn’t specify when it wrote off the aircraft.

The aircraft’s mysterious disappearance, and the reasons driving the plane maker to take such a drastic step, provide an insight into the costly rework Boeing faces as it prepares the long-delayed 777X program for commercial service. The undertaking is expected to be a focal point for investors when the U.S. industrial giant reports earnings on July 28.

Boeing is heading into the Farnborough International Airshow touting its momentum, imminently poised to win Federal Aviation Administration certification of the 737 Max 7 and riding its best half-year delivery performance since 2018. But as the company reaches the second half of certification flight tests for the 777-9, it is beginning the process of pouring resources and personnel into making about 40 already-built 777X aircraft airworthy and ready for delivery — a process that, according to Boeing, will stretch “over the next several years.”

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