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The Wire
19-06-2025
- Business
- The Wire
Quality Concerns in Dreamliners That Boeing Sold to Air India Had Given a Manager Nightmares
This report first appeared on The American Prospect and was republished with permission. Read the original here. Sign up for the Prospect's newsletter here. For 15 years now, engineers and quality control specialists have implored regulators, journalists and airlines to take a closer look at the 787 Dreamliner, Boeing's first and only clean-sheet commercial airplane designed from scratch since the company's horrific 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas. The smooth surface of the lightweight composite fibres used to construct the airframe can conceal deadly structural flaws, they warned. The non-union workforce that manufactures the jets in South Carolina is unqualified to stand up to 'good old boy' bosses constantly pressuring them to ignore obvious nonconformities, install malfunctioning parts and cut every corner imaginable to get planes out the door, they asserted. Unsavoury subcontractors have exploited Boeing's lax standards to litter the assembly line with fake parts, they until today, the contrarians could always demand to know: if the Dreamliner is so unsafe, why hasn't it ever crashed?The late John Barnett, who died last March in an apparent suicide two days into a three-day deposition stemming from the insane practices he witnessed and tried vainly to stop as a quality manager at the Dreamliner's final assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina, had a ready answer for this question: Just wait a bit. Most planes aren't designed to dive nosefirst into the ground like the 737 Max. It generally takes, he'd say with audible sadness, ten or twelve years for assembly-line sloppiness to culminate in a plane crash. (Barnett personally drove everywhere in the orange truck in which he died.)More from Maureen TkacikIt's too early to know exactly what caused the bizarre crash of Air India 171 in Ahmedabad, a western India city of 5.6 million people, just seconds into what was supposed to be a 10-hour flight to London. The pilot reportedly cried 'engine failure' in a mayday call to air traffic controllers seconds before the crash into a guest house for doctors, and footage of the plane, which slowly sank with its nose upturned in takeoff position, suggests a sudden loss of power. The 787 Dreamliner has been plagued by engine problems partially caused by the abundance of so-called 'foreign object debris' Boeing assembly line workers chronically leave on aircraft components in their haste to move to the next far, Boeing has only said they were 'working to gather more information' on the crash. Air India has confirmed that 241 of the 242 passengers aboard have died, with the lone survivor being treated in a nearby was demoted and ostracised after he attempted to force workers to disassemble and clean wire bundles and electrical boxes that had been littered with metal scraps of floorboard fasteners, scraps he knew could cause the electrical systems to short-circuit. Another former quality manager I know was fired after refusing to sign off on improperly-tied wire bundles littered with foreign object debris that had already begun to fray. FOD was implicated in a massive engine fire aboard a 787 test flight in 2010, and another test flight in Charleston in 2016 that Boeing was so keen to sweep under the rug it appealed to the Supreme Court rather than allow employee-witnesses to be deposed. (That case was settled before the Supreme Court made a decision.)A now-defunct Norwegian airline claimed in a 2020 lawsuit blaming Boeing for its demise that it had been forced to divert flights and cancel whole routes due to engine problems, and replace the engines on its Dreamliner fleet hundreds of times. In 2023 one of the airline's former 787s was dismantled for scrap, a literally unheard-of fate for a 10-year-old plane with a nine-figure list there's something else: two people deeply familiar with the Charleston 787 plant told the Prospect they had particularly acute quality concerns over planes that were delivered to Air Kitchens, a former quality manager who worked at the Charleston plant between 2009 and 2016, has a binder full of notes, documents and photos from her frustrating years at Boeing, one page of which lists the numbers of the eleven planes delivered between early 2012 and late 2013 whose quality defects most kept her awake at night. Six of them went to Air India, whose purchases were bolstered by billions of dollars in Export-Import Bank loan guarantees. The plane that crashed was delivered in January 2014 from Boeing's now-defunct assembly line in Everett, Washington, though its mid- and aft- fuselages were produced in it happens, that particular plane was delivered not long after a camera crew from Al-Jazeera showed up in Charleston to investigate the horror stories its reporters had been hearing about the workmanship and corporate culture of the plant. The channel's journalists had started digging into the plane's quality standards a year earlier, when the FAA grounded the planes for a few months after two small battery fires broke out on Japanese planes over the course of three days. Their findings were alarming: the company had outsourced most of the non-conceptual design of the plane to its suppliers, the FAA had fast-tracked the batteries and a host of other novel features aboard the planes without anything approaching the rigorous testing they had required for earlier planes, a major battery supplier's testing lab suffered a massive explosion whose precise cause had never been determined and an engineer had been fired for refusing to 'dumb down' his instructions for repairing flaws in the lightweight composite structures Boeing used to build the plane's most harrowing, however, was the footage filmed by an assembly line worker who wore a hidden camera as went about his day chatting up colleagues, virtually all of whom said they would never allow their family members to fly one of the planes the factory was was on medical leave with cancer when the footage was filmed, but the documentary premiered shortly after she returned, and leadership convened a meeting to encourage managers to snitch on anyone they recognized from the undercover footage.'I raised my hand and said, 'No one who works in this factory wants to fly these planes, I mean, that's just the truth,'' Kitchens said. A woman she didn't know, who was wearing a bomber jacket emblazoned with the FAA logo, shot her a scowl. But it was hardly the first time she'd expressed anxiety over the planes' safety with upper management. Years earlier, she had asked a boss if he would let his children fly on a plane with the litany of flaws and non-conformances he was urging her to 'pencil-whip': 'Cindy, none of these planes are staying in America, they're all going overseas,' he retorted, much to her investigator who worked on the documentary told the Prospect that employees he interviewed were especially anxious about three planes they had worked on that were scheduled to be delivered to Air India during the first months of 2014. The planes all had serious flaws that required them to be flown to the union assembly line in Everett to be re-worked. The Air India Dreamliner that crashed today took off from the Everett airport en route to Delhi for the first time on January 31, Tkacik is investigations editor at the Prospect and a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project.
India Gazette
17-06-2025
- Business
- India Gazette
Midair emergencies force four Boeing Dreamliners to divert India flights
Air India, Lufthansa and British Airways have cited technical issues for the diversions Four Boeing 787 Dreamliners on international flights to India have been forced to turn back due to technical issues over the past few days, according to media reports. On Sunday, a Hyderabad-bound Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt returned to the German airport midway through the journey based on a suspected bomb threat, according to sources quoted by the media outlet India Today. Air Traffic Control (ATC) at Hyderabad airport received a message that the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner was returning to Frankfurt after having taken off. On Monday, Air India flight AI315 was forced to return to Hong Kong just 15 minutes after taking off, Reuters reported. The airline confirmed the incident, citing a "technical issue" as the reason for the return, but did not provide further details. The Boeing 787-8 aircraft successfully landed without incident, and alternate arrangements were made for the passengers. Also on Monday, a British Airways flight carrying 214 passengers to Chennai was forced to dump fuel and return to London after the pilots reported a suspected technical issue, Business Insider reported. "The aircraft returned to Heathrow as a standard precaution after reports of a technical issue," a BA spokesperson told the website, adding that there was no "emergency landing." In a similar incident, passengers on an Air India San Francisco-Mumbai flight were asked to deplane in Kolkata on Tuesday after a snag was detected in the left engine during a scheduled stop, delaying the onward journey by hours, an India Today report said. These developments come just days after an Air India 787-8 crashed shortly after takeoff in Ahmedabad, killing 290 people. READ MORE: Air India disaster death toll climbs to 270 Officials told the Associated Press that early indications suggest the aircraft may not have been correctly configured for takeoff. There have been numerous complaints, whistleblower revelations and concerns regarding the safety of Boeing 787s, according to media reports. In 2019, a New York Times report revealed that John Barnett, a former quality manager who retired in 2017, had filed a whistleblower complaint alleging subpar work on the 787s. In January 2024, another whistleblower alleged that the Dreamliner's fuselage had improper connections, with gaps that could cause it to break apart in flight.
Time of India
13-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad was same that the dead Boeing whistleblower warned about in 2024, claims report
Last year, a former quality manager at Boeing reportedly warned that the factory that made the 787 Dreamliner was plagued by "shoddy work practices and poor oversight". According to a report in Gizmodo, John Barnett, who had worked for Boeing for 30 years before becoming one of its most outspoken critics, said that Boeing was building the planes with 'sub-standard' parts and that its mandate of speed and efficiency was endangering lives. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Barnett, who refused to fly on the Dreamliner, was also involved in a legal dispute with the company at the time that he died of an apparent suicide. He is said to be one of a long list of critics who expressed concern about the company's manufacturing practices. The report claims that the Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad killing 241 passengers was the same that Barnett had warned regulators about. Barnett had worked for the US plane giant for three decades, until his retirement in 2017 on health grounds. His death in March 2024 sparked conspiracy theories due to his involvement in the legal case against Boeing. John Barnett's controversial suicide Barnett retired Boeing in 2017. In March 2024, he was found dead at his motel in Charleston, South Carolina, just weeks after testifying against the aviation giant. The local coroner's office reportedly said that Barnett appears to have died as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot. According to a BBC report, Barnett accused Boeing of "denigrating his character and hampering his career because of the issues he pointed out - charges rejected by Boeing." At the time of his death, Barnett reportedly had been in Charleston for legal interviews linked to that case. The 787 was launched in 2011, with one of the advertised benefits reportedly being that Boeing could manufacture the aircraft more cheaply than its previous models. The Gizmodo report adds that from the get-go, the plane was ridiculed for having an overly complicated assembly process. The report quoting an aviation commentator said that it was as if Boeing had said 'F*ck it. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Let's throw out everything we've ever known or used in airplane production and use this new, unproven method.' Critics noted that the company had outsourced too many parts to too many different contractors and that there was a risk that all of those components might not properly fit together when the craft was finally assembled.
Gizmodo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Gizmodo
The Plane That Crashed Yesterday Was the Same One a Dead Boeing Whistleblower Warned About
Critics of Boeing have long expressed criticisms of the 787 Dreamliner and the company's standards. Last year, a former quality manager at Boeing warned that the factory that made the 787 Dreamliner—one of the company's newer models of airplane—was plagued by shoddy work practices and poor oversight. John Barnett, who had worked for the airplane manufacturer for many years before becoming one of its most outspoken critics, said that Boeing was building the planes with 'sub-standard' parts and that its mandate of speed and efficiency was endangering lives. Barnett, who refused to fly on the Dreamliner, was also involved in a legal dispute with the company at the time that he died of an apparent suicide. Yesterday, the plane that Barnett had warned regulators about crashed in Ahmedabad, India, killing all but one of the passengers. The worst aviation disaster in recent memory, the crash has spurred fresh scrutiny of its controversy-plagued manufacturer. While it will take months to understand what actually caused the crash, if the source of the disaster ends up being a vulnerability in the plane's technical design, it won't be particularly surprising. Barnett, whose death sparked conspiracy theories due to his involvement in the legal case against his former employer, was one of a long list of critics who have long expressed concern about the company's manufacturing practices. The 787 was launched in 2011, with one of the advertised benefits being that Boeing could manufacture the aircraft more cheaply than its previous models. However, from the get-go, the plane was ridiculed for having an overly complicated assembly process. One critic, writing in 2013, noted that the plane was put together through a convoluted network of contractors, some of whom offered limited transparency. Another aviation commentator said that it was as if Boeing had said 'F*ck it. Let's throw out everything we've ever known or used in airplane production and use this new, unproven method.' Critics noted that the company had outsourced too many parts to too many different contractors and that there was a risk that all of those components might not properly fit together when the craft was finally assembled. Upon launch, the plane was almost immediately plagued by technical problems. In 2013, a series of battery-related fires in aircraft cabins caused the FAA to ground all of the 787s in the U.S. until the safety issues could be resolved. In 2015, the U.S. air safety authority discovered a software bug in the plane's generator-control units that could hypothetically lead to a 'loss of control' by the plane's pilots. The plane also suffered from fuel leaks and other issues. In 2019, the New York Times reported for the first time on the South Carolina plant where the Dreamliner was manufactured, noting that it was alleged to be 'plagued by shoddy production and weak oversight that have threatened to compromise safety.' Barnett—who, by that time, had already left the company—was quoted heavily in the article, saying that he hadn't 'seen a plane [come] out of Charleston yet that I'd put my name on saying it's safe and airworthy.' After Barnett's death, another whistleblower who had formerly served as an engineer at Boeing, Sam Salehpour, claimed that deficiencies in the way the 787 was assembled could cause the aircraft to 'break apart' in midair. Salehpour went on to testify about the issues in front of Congress, accusing his former company of being involved in a 'criminal cover-up.' He also implied something could 'happen' to him as a result of his outspoken criticism. Around the same time, other Boeing whistleblowers emerged from the woodwork to offer similar critiques of the airplane manufacturer, another of whom died. That spring, Boeing also admitted to falsifying documents about the 787, communicating to the FAA that it 'may not have completed required inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage' and that other misconduct may have occurred at the company. Boeing did not return a request for comment.
India Today
13-06-2025
- Business
- India Today
How Air India Dreamliner crash deepens Boeing's crisis of confidence
The Air India Flight AI171 crash on June 12—the first fatal accident of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner—has renewed old and lingering doubts about the US aerospace giant's quality-control regimes and corporate culture. The tragedy has also placed the reputation of two other large corporations on the line: the Tata Group and Air India, which it owns since January 2022, for obvious Tatas started damage-control early on. Tata Sons chairman N. Chandrasekaran announced Rs 1 crore as compensation for the families of each victim of the plane India has confirmed the death of 241 of the total 242 people (passengers and crew) on board the plane, which crashed shortly after take-off from Ahmedabad airport on the afternoon of June 12, plunging into the BJ Medical College Hostel complex in the city's Meghaninagar area. At least 24 deaths are reported there. The Tata Group has offered to rebuild the hostel of the medical college.'We are deeply anguished by the tragic event involving Air India Flight 171. No words can adequately express the grief we feel at this moment. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost their loved ones, and with those who have been injured,' the Tata Group said in a statement. Why the crash happened is inconclusive for now, but for Boeing, this comes at a bad time as it faces years of scrutiny, whistleblower claims and a battered public and its reputation have been severely tested in recent years. Crashes of two 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 led to the aircraft itself being grounded around the world and the company being forced to reckon with grave problems in its MCAS software and internal systems. Just as the dust was starting to settle, a door plug blew off a 737 Max 9 in flight in early 2024, and questions about Boeing's manufacturing practices came roaring the Dreamliner, the company's long-haul, wide-bodied flagship, is at the heart of its latest debacle. The 787 enjoyed a track-record of safety until now, but not without controversy. At least as far back as 2017, according to John Barnett, a former quality manager at Boeing's 787 plant in Charleston, South Carolina, who has filed a confidential United States regulator complaint, faulty parts were installed in planes to keep production moving and there was lack of oversight and transparency at the company's sprawling warnings included concerns that as many as a quarter of the quick-donning systems, which provide passengers with emergency oxygen on some jets, might not work properly. But these were dismissed at the time. Barnett took his life this March in the midst of legal fights with whistleblower, Sam Salehpour, alleged improprieties involving the Dreamliner in 2014, when he complained that parts on the aircraft's fuselage had been improperly installed, meaning these could weaken over the time of the Ahmedabad accident, Boeing has acted responsibly, expressing regret and promising to work fully with Indian officials. But the market response has been brutal. The company's shares fell sharply in US premarket trading after news of the crash on June 12, down as much as 8 per cent, as analysts said it would stir concerns among investors about potential fallout in both legal liability and future sales of the aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), hasn't issued an emergency order to ground fleets of the Dreamliner, but has directed a detailed review of operations of wide-body Dreamliners operated by Air makes this moment so perilous for Boeing is the accumulation of its ongoing difficulties. The company is already struggling with delivery delays, production slowdowns resulting from strikes, and a more generalised crisis of confidence in the industry. Even Boeing's commercial customers have started to cite concerns about discrepancies on delivery schedules, The New York Times US authorities have insisted there is 'no need at this time' to ground the Dreamliner fleet but that investigations are on. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is likely to stay in close touch with the Indian authorities as the investigation the timing of the crisis couldn't be worse. The crash has scrambled Boeing's safety narrative even as it faces pressure to win back the trust of airlines, regulators, investors as well as passengers, whose patience is wearing there is any connection between this crash and any of the other safety lapses already known, the implications could be profound, not just for the financial future of Boeing but for the regulation of aviation safety around the to India Today MagazineMust Watch
