Boeing 787 May Have Problem

The Boeing 787 has re-entered headlines with the possibility of a fresh problem that needs to be inspected.

As part of the developments, broken by Paddle Your Own Kanoo and citing an unpublished ruling, there are 119 Dreamliners at risk of having a safety defect across the United States, and therefore impacting airlines in this country that fly with the series.

The problem centres around oxygen masks that may be faulty; as a result, the defective nature of the masks would likely lead to them not working if the chain were to experience a depressurisation event.

The FAA is stating that the tubing for the masks could be kinked, which is evidently an unsafe condition that is the focus of the regulator’s investigation to determine the potentially affected aircraft.

With the directive to be issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there’s now pressure from airlines to have the time extended to inspect their aircraft and fix faulty parts, for a period longer than what the governing regulator is intending to propose by one year.

One of the priorities is not just to make the aircraft in question entirely safe, but also to have this conducted in a manner that does not impact the active aircraft in service.

The Boeing 787 remains a pivotal part of the U.S. aviation sector, with airlines such as American Airlines and United Airlines operating it heavily. The latter relies heavily on it for its long-haul flying, with all three models in service.

2019 Reporting On Boeing 787

In 2019, during arguably the early stages of what would prove to be a challenging next few years for the 787 program, the aircraft entered headlines thanks to a whistleblower.

John Barnett said that tests would suggest that up to a quarter of oxygen systems could be faulty on the Boeing 787 aircraft and may not work when needed.

Barnett acted as. A quality control engineer for 32 years before retiring from the business in March 2017, and most recently employed at the North Charleston facility, where he acted as the quality manager.

Naturally, Boeing, the planemaker in question, denied the acquisitions in 2019 and said that the aircraft built were all to the highest level of quality and safety, something that would ultimately be proven not to be true.

Therefore, the recent reporting surrounding over 100 Boeing 787 aircraft seeing the risk of a faulty mask, which came six years after these comments, follows a string of quality-related concerns in the last six to seven years.

Many of those quality concerns stem from an overall push to get new aircraft off the production line more quickly in the past, in a bid to meet the delivery deadlines in place.

As a result, with the pressure during the 2010s continuing to rise, Boeing, based on evidence shared by whistleblowers and supported by data, pushed to get aircraft out as quickly as possible, skipping quality control.