Boeing sought on Monday to reassure the general public of the security of its 787 Dreamliner airplane days earlier than a whistle-blower is scheduled to testify earlier than Congress about his considerations relating to the jet’s structural integrity.
In a briefing for reporters on the manufacturing facility in North Charleston, S.C., the place the airplane is assembled, two high Boeing engineers stated the corporate had performed exhaustive exams, inspections and analyses of the airplane, each throughout its growth and in recent times, and located no proof that its physique would fail prematurely.
The presentation got here just below every week after The New York Instances reported the allegations by the whistle-blower, Sam Salehpour, who works as a top quality engineer at Boeing and is ready to testify earlier than a Senate panel on Wednesday. Mr. Salehpour stated that sections of the fuselage of the Dreamliner, a wide-body airplane that makes in depth use of composite supplies, weren’t correctly mounted collectively and that the airplane may undergo structural failure over time in consequence. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating his allegations.
Mr. Salehpour’s claims immediately created one other public-relations downside for Boeing, which has been dealing with intense scrutiny over its manufacturing practices after a panel got here off a 737 Max throughout an Alaska Airways flight in January.
Mr. Salehpour stated that the gaps the place sections of the Dreamliner’s fuselage have been mounted collectively didn’t at all times meet Boeing’s specs, one thing that he stated may weaken the plane over time. The Boeing engineers disagreed along with his evaluation, with out naming him. They stated the airplane had gone by means of in depth testing that confirmed that, in a overwhelming majority of instances, the gaps met the specs. Even when the gaps exceeded the specs by an affordable quantity, they’d not have an effect on the airplane’s sturdiness, the engineers added.
“Not solely did we interrogate these airframes — we have been taking out fasteners, we have been in search of injury, we’re additionally doing the approval inspections to grasp the construct situation, and we didn’t discover any fatigue points within the composite construction,” stated Steve Chisholm, a vp and the useful chief engineer for mechanical and structural engineering at Boeing.
Mr. Chisholm stated the corporate had put the Dreamliner by means of in depth exams that turned up no proof of fatigue within the jet’s composite construction. A 787 airframe was subjected to testing that put it by means of 165,000 “flight cycles,” the equal pressurization and depressurization of as many flights. That determine far exceeded the airplane’s anticipated life span and the airframe nonetheless confirmed no indicators of fatigue, he stated.
The 787 airplane with the very best variety of cycles belongs to a Japanese airline, All Nippon Airways, which obtained it in late 2012, in line with Boeing. That plane has been by means of about 16,500 cycles, the corporate stated.
In a press release on Monday, Debra S. Katz, a lawyer for Mr. Salehpour, urged warning about accepting Boeing’s assertions in regards to the Dreamliner as truth.
“We can’t communicate or reply to knowledge that we haven’t seen, however Boeing has at all times stated ‘simply belief us’ on the subject of security,” Ms. Katz stated. “It’s clear that commonplace is now not adequate, and any knowledge supplied by Boeing ought to be validated by impartial specialists and the F.A.A. earlier than it’s taken at face worth.”
Mr. Salehpour is scheduled to testify on Wednesday earlier than the Senate Homeland Safety and Governmental Affairs Committee’s investigations subcommittee. Individually that day, the Senate Commerce Committee is planning to carry a listening to with specialists who have been concerned in producing a current F.A.A. report that faulted Boeing’s security tradition.
Boeing started investigating issues with gaps within the Dreamliner about 5 years in the past, ultimately discovering that some between adjoining elements of the airplane’s physique didn’t meet its personal specs of being lower than five-thousandths of an inch thick. That led the corporate to pause deliveries for about 18 months because it inspected its processes and planes, making adjustments the place acceptable. That work concerned eradicating hundreds of fasteners from planes in its stock and inspecting the scale of the hole between the 2 supplies every fastener held collectively.
The corporate stated that about 1 p.c of all gaps inspected failed to fulfill specs. The corporate additionally stated that analysis and testing over the previous few years had discovered that the bigger gaps posed no risk to the airplane’s long-term sturdiness.
The corporate famous that 671 Dreamliners had gone by means of thorough six-year upkeep checks, whereas eight had gone by means of 12-year checks, and it stated that none of these checks discovered any indicators of untimely fatigue. Boeing stated it didn’t imagine that Dreamliners presently being flown by its clients have been in want of any modification.
