Jun. 24--The star attraction at Virgin Atlantic's 25th birthday bash Monday night in New York was a 787 Dreamliner simulator that let partygoers "land" the new jet.

Sadly, that's the closest anyone will likely come to flying the ground-breaking plane for months.

Delays to the Dreamliner could be extensive and other setbacks could lie in store for the highly complex aircraft, warned stock analysts Heidi Wood of Morgan Stanley and Myles Walton of Oppenheimer as they downgraded Chicago-based Boeing Co. on Wednesday.

Boeing's bombshell announcement Tuesday that it was delaying the plane's first flight and first delivery was greeted with dismay by investors, analysts and buyers including launch customer All Nippon Airways and Virgin Atlantic, a carrier founded by billionaire Richard Branson.

Japan-based ANA said it first learned of the latest disruption on Tuesday, just hours before Boeing announced to the world that it had discovered structural issues in the Dreamliner, the first large commercial jet to be largely composed of super-hardened plastics.

"It's hugely disappointing for airlines that have ordered the 787," said Virgin Atlantic spokesman Paul Charles. Virgin Atlantic already faces a two-year wait for its 15 Dreamliners on order, which were due to begin arriving in 2011.

Analysts said they were concerned to learn that stress-testing of the 787's wings caused its composite structure to "delaminate," or fragment, in the crucial area where the wings are integrated with the aircraft's body. Also worrisome is the fact that the materials didn't behave as Boeing's computer models had predicted.

Boeing officials said the issue should be relatively easy to fix and would involving retrofitting small metal plates to reinforce the plane's structure in about 36 areas.

But the incident throws into question the advanced computer modeling that Boeing used to design the 787 and that it had been relying on to streamline testing of the brand-new plane.

"The crucial fact that cannot be lost in the news it that the certification of the airplane relies upon [Boeing] proving to the FAA that its predictive modeling works," said Wood. "The fact that it didn't work begs the question as to where else the predictors will fail?"

Wood predicts the 787's first flight won't occur until this fall, at earliest, and that the initial delivery to ANA will likely be pushed back to 2011. She thinks concerns over the accuracy of Boeing's computer models could well complicate and lengthen the process of gaining federal certification of the aircraft's flight-worthiness.