It's time for Boeing's entire safety culture to be reviewed and restored, Senator Richard Blumenthal said. Boeing tries to reassure. The manufacturer explains that it has carried out thousands of tests which show that the 787 and 777 meet safety criteria.
However, it is proven that of the 1,123 Dreamliners delivered since 2011, those received by the companies before 2020, i.e. 939 aircraft, presented defects. The first problem identified showed greater spacing than tolerated by Boeing specifications between the edges of the fuselage sections and the straps (all of which were dismantled and checked) to connect them. The discrepancy noted did not call into question flight safety, according to Lisa Fahl, director of program engineering at Boeing Aviation. Deliveries of the 787 were suspended between November 2020 and March 2021. After the identification of new defects, deliveries of 120 aircraft were frozen from May 2021 to August 2022. The problems were with the new assembly procedures for the 777, a plane put into service in 1995. These procedures were applied without carrying out the necessary redesign of the parts concerned, which resulted in poor alignment between them.