A piece of the Air India jet that crashed in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025.
For 15 years now, engineers and quality control specialists have implored regulators, journalists and airlines to take a closer look at the 787 Dreamliner, Boeing’s first and only clean-sheet commercial airplane designed from scratch since the company’s horrific 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas. The smooth surface of the lightweight composite fibers used to construct the airframe can conceal deadly structural flaws, they warned. The non-union workforce that manufactures the jets in South Carolina is unqualified to stand up to “good old boy” bosses constantly pressuring them to ignore obvious nonconformities, install malfunctioning parts and cut every corner imaginable to get planes out the door, they asserted. Unsavory subcontractors have exploited Boeing’s lax standards to litter the assembly line with fake parts, they demonstrated.
But until today, the contrarians could always demand to know: if the Dreamliner is so unsafe, why hasn’t it ever crashed?
The late John Barnett, who died last March in an apparent suicide two days into a three-day deposition stemming from the insane practices he witnessed and tried vainly to stop as a quality manager at the Dreamliner’s final assembly plant in Charleston, South Carolina, had a ready answer for this question: Just wait a bit. Most planes aren’t designed to dive nosefirst into the ground like the 737 Max. It generally takes, he’d say with audible...
It’s that time of the year again when taxpayers across the country start filing their Income Tax Returns (ITR). But hold on. If you’re all set to hit submit, take a moment and double-check your re...