Air India flight AI171 crash raises safety questions about Boeing 787 Dreamliners, following previous whistleblower reports of structural issues.
The crash of Air India flight AI171 on Thursday has cast a renewed spotlight on long-standing safety concerns tied to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner; issues that were flagged by whistleblowers as early as last year.
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The ill-fated flight, a London-bound Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, went down shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport. With 242 people on board, the incident is now being described as one of the worst aviation disasters in recent memory. Among those on board were 169 Indian nationals, 53 British passengers, one Canadian and seven Portuguese nationals. At least one survivor has been reported, while the exact cause of the crash remains under investigation by Air India and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
The incident has revived scrutiny of past warnings about potential structural and assembly issues with the 787 aircraft. In 2023, Boeing engineer and whistleblower Sam Salehpour, who worked at the company for nearly two decades, raised red flags about what he described as safety-threatening assembly defects in the Dreamliner fleet.
According to Salehpour, Boeing ignored his concerns and transferred him involuntarily to the 777 programme as retaliation. His legal team stated, “Rather than heeding his warnings, Boeing prioritised getting the planes...
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