The FAA said it is investigating Boeing after several mandatory inspections of the 787 Dreamliner were not performed as required. The Dreamliners are being produced at Boeing’s manufacturing facility in North Charleston, SC
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The FAA said it is investigating Boeing after several mandatory inspections of the 787 Dreamliner were not performed as required. The Dreamliners are being produced at Boeing’s manufacturing facility in North Charleston, SC
Logan Cyrus/AFP via Getty Images
The Federal Aviation Administration said it has opened an investigation into Boeing related to the inspection 787 Dreamliner that “may not have been completed.”
The FAA said Monday that Boeing “voluntarily informed us in April” that the plane’s manufacturer may not have completed the necessary tests to confirm that there was adequate bonding and grounding in place. where the wings connect to the carbon fiber fuselage on some 787 jets.
In a statement to NPR, the FAA said it is also investigating “whether Boeing completed inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records.” The agency also said Boeing is re-examining “all 787 aircraft still in the production system and must also create a plan to address the active fleet.”
The FAA already has previously said it was stepping up monitoring of Boeing and the 787 Dreamliner after the discovery of a manufacturing defect on the wide-body aircraft in 2022.
Boeing told NPR that it “promptly notified the FAA and this was not an immediate safety issue for flight.” Boeing provided an April 29 internal email written by Scott Stocker, head of the 787 program, sent to Boeing employees in South Carolina, where the Dreamliner is produced.
Stocker wrote that an employee “saw something in our plant that he believed was not being done properly and spoke up about it.” The issue was raised with the operations team who notified the FAA. “After receiving the report, we quickly looked into the matter and learned that some people violated Company policy by not taking the required test and recording the work as completed. “
Boeing said it was taking “swift and serious corrective action with many teammates.”
In March, a former Boeing quality control manager who blew the whistle on safety problems with the 787 Dreamliner was found dead in a vehicle after an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. John Barnett testified the previous day in testimony regarding a series of problems he said he identified at Boeing’s North Charleston, SC plant.
Boeing is again under close scrutiny because manufacturing and quality control errors after one door plug blew up the 737 Max 9 on a flight in January. After that incident, the FAA blamed Boeing for “many cases” about quality control shortcomings during 737 Max production. Boeing is still reeling from the crashes of two 737 Max planes killing a total of 346 people in 2018 and 2019. Flight software error was blamed for both accidents.
