Im sure some airline have placed orders just hoping for long delays and compensation to boot.

Airlines are in the buisness of flying PAX and cargo from One place to the other inorder to make money , they plan future fleets considering there growth strategy and where they expect themselves to be down the line . No airline exec that i have met (and in my line of work we meet all sorts of them) will hope that all his growth strategy is thrown off just because he will gain large portions of compensation . You simply do not lock up billions of dollars 3-6 years in advance just to make few millions from compensation. No one in there sane minds will lock up and committ guarantees to billions of dollars for anyother purpose then to buy aircraft and use it to expands its buisness .It is the same with hedging , some airlines make (Have made) higher % of profit when they hedge for fuel (as compared to normal % profit) , but we dont see them selling aircrafts and going into the fuel trading buisness 😀

What if a problem occurs with the 747LCF, it could quite easily!

Boeing has contigencies , thinking that they wont have contigencies in place for a 10 billlion dollar development program that has so much at stake ( Pre EIS order book will most likely consist of more orders then the A330 (340 excluded) has till date ) is bordering foolishness . Boeing is in contact with Volga just incase they need there aircrafts for moving equipment incase one or 2 LCF’s has a downtime , the bigger stuff will in that case be shipped and boeing allready has that ready as a contigency .

Anything could still go wrong.

But Wont;) 😎