The New Dreamliner May Not Be So Dreamy After All
The new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. (Photo: AP)
A yearlong investigation by Al Jazeera has uncovered worrying evidence about the safety of Boeing’s flagship “Dreamliner” plane.
The Qatari news network will on Wednesday present their findings in a documentary, Broken Dreams: The Boeing 787.
The Boeing 787 faced issues in January last year when two battery failures led to fleets being grounded worldwide. But some Boeing employees say the plane has more issues than just the battery.
A memo obtained by Al Jazeera shows Boeing altered its quality standards in 2010, at a time when the 787 was already two years delayed.
The source says Boeing “changed basic engineering principles to meet schedule.”
“You don’t change your quality process for schedule,” said Cynthia Cole, a 32-year veteran engineer at the company, and former president of Boeing’s engineers union, SPEEA.
“You make quality happen within the schedule. They’re short-changing the engineering process to meet a schedule. I don’t see how these people who write these things and agree to these things, you know, and the signatures down here, how they sleep at night. I just don’t get it. How can you do that? As an engineer, I find that reprehensible.”
This Air New Zealand 787-9 was the first to be delivered in July. (Photo: AP)
John Woods, a former manufacturing engineer in Charleston, South Carolina, one of two sites where Boeing assembles the 787, said: “There’s no doubt there are bad repairs going out the door on the 787 aircraft. I am worried that sooner or later, there’s going to be a structural failure on the fuselage.”
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A whistleblower at Boeing South Carolina told Al Jazeera, “It’s been eating me alive to know what I know, and have no avenue, no venue to say anything. With all the problems reported on the 787, there’s 90 percent that’s getting swept away… hushed up. It’s an iceberg.”
Using a hidden camera, the whistleblower films workers discussing drug abuse and even films some workers admitting they would have to “have a death wish” to fly on the 787.
Air Canada shows off its first Dreamliner to the news media. (Courtesy: Yahoo South Africa)
"We’re not building them to fly; we’re building them to sell,” says one worker. “You know what I’m saying?”
Boeing has flatly rejected the allegations in the documentary, saying John Woods’ safety claims have “no merit.”
“I’m extremely confident in the quality of the workforce in Boeing South Carolina,” said Larry Loftis, Boeing vice president and general manager of the 787 program. “The number one focus that we have at Boeing is ensuring the continued safe airworthiness of an airplane, the integrity of the airplane and the quality of the airplane going out.”
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