And then, four days before the show was to officially begin tomorrow, Air India flight 171 crashed, killing 241 of 242 people on board and at least three dozen on the ground where the 14-year-old 787-8 pancaked in to a densely packed residential and educational area only two kilometers from the airport.

Videos of the event showed the 787 using up almost all of the 11,500 ft runway to take off in a cloud of dust (presumably the overrun area), barely climbing a few hundred feet, dipping and climbing slightly again before smoothly descending into an explosive ball of smoke and flame on impact out of view of the cameras.

The pilot radioed a Mayday with the terse message reporting power problems with the GEnx engines on the plane.

Very quickly pundits, pilots, armchair experts and even former crash investigators began hypothesizing on what went wrong. Theories ranged from pilot error, misconfigured flaps, dual engine failure, electrical failures and more. The only thing missing was an alien ray from outer space.

GE, Boeing cancel events

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg quickly canceled plans to attend the air show. GE canceled a briefing about its RISE Open Fan engine scheduled for the Saturday after the crash and a Future Airplanes forum set for opening day that included speakers from GE and Boeing. Boeing downplayed a Saturday media reception and canceled another one planned for Tuesday at which executives were to be in attendance.

Five for Five

Some quickly began raising questions about the 787’s safety, raising old issues and hinting that regulators should ground the airplane. For Boeing, this topic is especially sensitive, given the safety and quality issues raised in recent years and which continue to dog the company.

Boeing’s last four pure commercial airliner programs plus the commercially based 767/KC-46A USAF refueling tanker each have had development, design, quality and in some cases safety problems. Boeing Commercial Airplanes is five for five for problems, delays and billions of dollars in losses.

The 787

The 787’s history was the beginning of a long series of safety, quality, design and production issues that began to emerge in 2007, the year before the model was supposed to enter service. It wasn’t until October 2011 that the first 787-8 entered service, with Japan’s ANA.

In January 2013, two 787s—one from Japan Air Lines (JAL) and one from ANA—suffered battery fires one week apart, The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded the US-registered fleet pending the investigation. Foreign regulators followed suit; globally, 50 787s sat for three months before returning to service.

A short time later, another 787, this one owned by Ethiopian Airlines, had a fire that was traced to pinched wiring that arced, creating a blaze. The global fleet continued in operation.

In the intervening years, various problems emerged requiring Airworthiness Directives, Service Bulletins and inspections, but this is fairly normal. But in 2020, nine years after EIS and 16 years after production began, paper-thin gaps between fuselage joins were discovered. Deliveries were halted for 20 months while fixes were designed. One hundred ten 787s had been built with all requiring inspection and most require rework to fix it, taking 3-4 months per plane. The last of these was complete early this year.

The 747-8

Development of the 747-8 had its trouble. It was more than a year late, about $2bn in charges were written off and the initial design proved to have flutter issues. Engineering work outsourced to India came back flawed and had to be reworked by Boeing employees, taking time and adding to costs. Lufthansa Airlines refused to accept the first of 20 on order and never replaced the aircraft.

The 737 MAX

The history of the 737 MAX is etched in everybody’s mind who is connected to the aviation industry and who are aviation enthusiasts. After two crashes of five-month-old 737-8s in October 2018 and March 2019, the airplane was grounded for 21 months by the FAA. Redesign of the now-famous MCAS system that was flawed and at the root of the accidents took exponentially more time than anticipated. The FAA rejected early proposals.

As time dragged on, more issues were found, and these had to have fixes designed and approved. Still more design issues were discovered and after some in-service bugs emerged, still more design and fixes were needed.

Certification of the 737-7 and 737-10 MAXes still hasn’t occurred, years after these two family members were supposed to enter service. In January 2024, a door plug blew off a new 737-9 operated by Alaska Airlines minutes after take off from Portland (OR). An emergency landing followed safely. The low altitude and by sheer chance that the two seats next to the door plug were empty prevented anyone from being sucked out of the airplane.

Minor injuries occurred and the plane was damaged sufficiently that Alaska refused to keep it; Boeing took the airplane back in exchange for an order for a MAX 10 and compensation to the airline. The FAA grounded 171 MAXes operating in the US for three weeks before approving Boeing’s inspection plan and subsequent fix. The problem was traced to sloppy assembly at the 737 Renton (WA) production plant.

The 777X

Certification of this stretched, re-engined, re-winged version of the 777 Classic—one of legacy Boeing’s best airliners—was marching ahead smoothly when the MAX crisis erupted. The FAA quickly began reexamining all the certification work completed to then on the 777X, which was supposed to enter service in January 2020. This took time, created delays and cost money.

Flight tests revealed that the plane had a tendency for uncommanded nose-down pitches. Bugs in the flight control software were discovered. A redesign was required. The horizontal tailplane was thought by some to be too small for the larger plane (than the Classic), much as the tailplane of the McDonnell Douglas proved too small for the MD-11 compared with the DC-10 from which it was derived.

More recently, a thrust link alongside the massive engines was found to be flawed, halting test flights and requiring a redesign.

Billions of dollars have been written off. Certification is hoped for by the end of this year, with EIS planned for next year—six years late and 13 years after the program launch.

The KC-46A

Boeing’s performance on the KC-46A tanker, a military program, has been abysmal. This airplane is based on the commercial 767-200ER and as such is built by Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA). Boeing Defense, Space and Security (BDS) militarizes the airplane.

Several systems have what’s called Level 1 problems. The remote-vision tail refueling book still doesn’t work, years after the years-delayed entry into service with the USAF. The refueling boom is developed by a sub-contractor. That’s bad enough, along with the other systems issues, but BCA’s role is building a quality airplane in the first place—and herein lies the problem.

Sloppy production allowed a variety of foreign objects to find their way into the finished airplanes. Quality control was so bad that the air force refused delivery a few times for weeks at a time. Boeing has already written off $6bn for the program, and there is no telling if more charges are to come.

Systemic problems

This history makes it clear that BCA (and BDS, which has more issues than recounted here) has systemic problems that Ortberg must fix. Progress has been made, but the Air India crash and talk of grounding the 787 (however premature this, given the investigation is in its infancy) has resurfaced memories of these previous issues.

Boeing’s way back to health may suffer a setback if any fault with the airplane contributed to the accident.

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