Boeing on Monday celebrated the delivery of two 787 Dreamliners to an airline that will immediately showcase the plane's main selling point — its suitability for opening "long, thin" routes linking distant cities where passenger volume is too small to support larger jets.

One of the planes for the second Dreamliner customer, Japan Airlines (JAL), will be used to inaugurate a new route between Tokyo and Boston next month. Another JAL 787 will fly from Tokyo to San Diego, beginning later this year.

Neither Boston nor San Diego have direct flights to Asia today.

At a ceremony in Everett before the Dreamliners took off for Japan, Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief Jim Albaugh recalled that the jet-maker had promised "to connect city pairs that have never been connected before."

"Launch of this new route reflects how capable this airplane is," Albaugh said.

The planes, formally handed over Sunday, are the first powered with American-made General Electric engines. The previous five Dreamliners, with British-made Rolls-Royce engines, had all gone to launch customer All Nippon Airways (ANA), also of Japan.

ANA will open two similar "long, thin" routes to the U.S., to Seattle later this year and to San Jose, Calif., next spring. No firm dates have yet been announced.

At the Everett ceremony, Yoshiharu Ueki, president of JAL, said the two main airports in Tokyo will increase their landing slots significantly starting next year. That gives the airline a chance to grow, and "the 787 Dreamliner is a strategic aircraft that will play a key part in this expansion," he said.

Long overdue

Ueki conceded disappointment that the Dreamliner arrived three years late.

Last month's new delay, when delamination was found in the plastic-composite structure of the aft fuselage section, caused JAL to push out inauguration of service to Moscow, Delhi and Beijing by another month, to the end of April, he said.

That also disrupted recovery plans, after the airline's emergence from bankruptcy protection just a year ago. Nevertheless, it seems Boeing has dispelled any tension with its customer.

Ueki said he feels "very emotional and excited" now that his plane has arrived.

He said that at a party Sunday night for airline and Boeing officials, "all of us were in tears and praising each other for our hard work."

Calling the 787 a "revolutionary aircraft," he said the plane will cost JAL 20 percent less to operate and offer a better passenger experience, with higher, more comfortable humidity and cabin pressure, bigger windows and mood lighting.

Albaugh also acknowledged the delays, while looking forward to success.

"We know we are late. We apologize for that," he told Ueki. "We hope when you start operating this airplane, you'll forgive us."

Interviewed after the ceremony, Albaugh addressed the painfully slow pace of Dreamliner deliveries.

Boeing started rolling out the Dreamliners at a rate of 3.5 per month March 1, and is preparing to gear up to five jets per month this fall. But those planes are sitting parked at Paine Field instead of flying off to customers.

That's because the planes coming off the assembly line still require modifications due to work left undone earlier in the supply chain.

As the Paine Field ramp grows ever more cluttered, Boeing has been doing most modifications inside a building at the field's south end.

Albaugh said accelerating the modifications is a key goal of Larry Loftis, the new leader he appointed last month to head the 787 program. Loftis formerly oversaw 777 production.

Loftis has already "put in place some different approaches to doing the modifications," Albaugh said. "I anticipate we're going to deliver quite a number of modified airplanes" this year.

JAL's two planes were Dreamliners No. 23 and No. 33 off the line. The first of those spent months in San Antonio, Texas, undergoing modification work there.

Albaugh said he'll stick to the company's previous projection of delivering somewhere between 35 and 43 Dreamliners in 2012.

He also addressed a weekend report from Charleston, S.C., that Boeing may buy more land around its 787 fuselage-fabrication and final-assembly complex in North Charleston for potential expansion.

"You want to have some property in the event you want to expand," Albaugh said. " We have no plans to do that. But you know, you need to anticipate anything that might come along.

"I don't think you need to read too much into that, other than that we have rights to some land out there," he said, then added that because of planned production hikes ahead of about 40 percent, Boeing will grow all its facilities.

"We're going to grow here in Puget Sound. We're going to grow in Charleston. We're going to grow in Salt Lake, in Winnipeg," Albaugh said.

Inside Dreamliner No. 33 Monday, JAL showed off its cabin design, seating 186 passengers, including 42 in high-end, business-class seats, the rest in economy. That compares with seating for 158 passengers on ANA's long-haul flights.

Japanese perks

JAL's passenger amenities include some Japanese cultural touches.

The toilets have bidets. And the in-flight entertainment system includes a channel called Sky Manga, on which passengers can call up some 30 titles of the distinctive Japanese comics to read on their seat-back screens.

Airline spokeswoman Yap Sze Hunn said the airline is exploring English-language versions of manga, as well as adding books in English.

JAL has 45 Dreamliners on order, including 20 of the larger 787-9 model.

The next two deliveries are expected next month, and Ueki said those deliveries should be on time. The schedule for subsequent deliveries is still under discussion with Boeing, he said.

Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com

Information in this article, originally published March 26, 2012, was corrected March 27, 2012. A previous version of this story said the 787 would provide passengers with lower humidity and cabin pressure. In fact, it will have higher, more comfortable humidity and cabin pressure.