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While the agony of India and Air India is palpable, there is an entity far away across the seas which will also find itself facing more turbulence—Boeing.
One of the world’s two biggest aircraft manufacturers (along with Airbus), Boeing has had a terrible few years in the recent past.
And as Thursday’s Gujarat crash showed, its streak of terrible luck seems in no hurry to run out any time soon.
The Air India plane that crashed in Ahmedabad on Thursday was a Boeing 787-8, otherwise billed the ‘Dreamliner’, both for its fuel efficiency (when launched, compared to the fuel-guzzling 1960s-era jumbo jets) as well as the smooth ride it offered.
READ | Here is how India will launch Air India crash investigation as Chicago Convention rules kick in
But now questions will be asked not just to the airline and India’s aviation safety authorities, but also to Boeing as well as the plane’s engine-maker, which is General Electric’s Aerospace division.
Dreamliners had entered the Air India fleet in 2012 and was the workhorse for long on its long-haul flights. Even the ill-fated aircraft had flown to Paris the previous day before returning to Delhi on the day of the crash and then flying to Ahmedabad from the national capital before catastrophe struck.
Boeing had just about put its travails with the 737 MAX just a few days before Ahmedabad—where it had reached a one billion dollar plus deal with the US Justice Department to avoid further action in the twin 737 MAX crashes in the 2018-19 period. That story, of course, is the stuff that a million social media posts have been highlighting the last couple of days, of how Boeing’s execs cut corners and avoided scrutiny by installing a software in planes without informing pilots (as that would have warranted expensive retraining), leading to two crashes in quick succession—one in Indonesia and the other in Ethiopia. This had led to the 737 MAX being grounded all over the world for more than a year, and even as incidents like the US one last year of an emergency door coming off mid-flight showed, Boeing was fated to earn its bad reputation for some more time.
MORE | The rise and fall of the Dreamliner
Add to that whistleblowers alleging the airline had an ingrained culture of using substandard parts, including on the Dreamliner, and a debilitating worker’s strike that lasted for several weeks, it is but no wonder two things happened—Airbus stormed way ahead of Boeing for the first time in sales, even as global aircraft deliveries, including for Boeing’s brand new long-haul model, the Boeing 777X, getting further delayed (If it’s any solace, Airbus deliveries of new aircraft, including its much-in-demand A350, is also facing delays). And that, too, during a time when air travel is on a boom with airlines around the world clamouring to get their hands on the new aircraft they ordered.
On the positive side for the Seattle-based behemoth, the Ahmedabad incident is the first fatal incident involving the Dreamliner, despite all the allegations of whistleblower Sam Salehpour, that questioned how Boeing assembled the fuselage of the plane that raised doubts over its structural integrity. And the aircraft in question, VT-ANB with serial number 36279, had been in service for more than 12 years.
And while only a full-fledged investigation can prove what went wrong, most theories do not point fingers at any structural issue with the aircraft. And all said and done, the Dreamliner model recently carried its billionth passenger since entering the world of civil aviation in early 2012 across the 1,100 aircraft in service with airliners around the world.
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