Were the mandatory inspections on the 787 “Dreamliner” properly carried out? This is what the American Civil Aviation Agency is trying to find out (FAA) which announced on Monday the opening of an investigation into Boeing.
This investigation aims in particular to find out whether the aircraft manufacturer correctly carried out the mandatory checks regarding the joining of the wings to the fuselage “on certain 787 Dreamliner aircraft,” the FAA indicated in an email. She specifies that she is “investigating whether Boeing carried out these inspections” but also to verify “whether company employees may have falsified documents related to the plane.”
That investigation was initiated after Boeing informed the agency “in April that it may not have performed required inspections.”
New inspections of “all 787 aircraft”
The aircraft manufacturer “re-inspects all 787 aircraft still in production and must also develop a plan to care for the fleet in service,” adds the FAA. The 787 Dreamliner and the 737 MAX have suffered numerous production problems since 2023, which have slowed the aircraft manufacturer’s deliveries. This has forced several airlines to change their flight schedules for 2024.
Scott Stocker, manager of the 787 program, sent an email on April 29 to employees at the South Carolina site where these devices are manufactured, informing them that “a teammate saw what appeared to be an irregularity in a test of compliance required at the wing body junction”. “He spoke to his manager, who brought it to the attention of senior management,” he added.
“We quickly looked into the matter and learned that several individuals had violated company policies by not performing a required test but recording the work as completed,” Scott Stocker wrote. He assured that “the team of engineers [de Boeing] assessed that this fault did not create an immediate flight safety problem.
Two crashes in 2018 and 2019
Boeing, which had already struggled to recover after two crashes in 2018 and 2019, is in turmoil after a succession of quality and safety problems on its planes for more than a year. An Alaska Airlines plane notably lost a door stopper in flight on January 5.
On April 17, four whistleblowers, including an engineer and former Boeing employees, testified before a US Senate investigative committee to prevent “serious problems” in the production of the Boeing 737 MAX, 787 Dreamliner and 777.
This led Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun to announce he would step down at the end of the year.