Boeing Dreamliner investigated after inspection records ‘falsified by employees’

A fresh investigation into the Boeing 787 Dreamliner has been opened by US regulators after the company said some employees may not have inspected some planes properly.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it “is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records”.

It is also examining whether Boeing completed the inspections to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes.

The agency said “at the same time, Boeing is reinspecting all 787 airplanes still within the production system and must also create a plan to address the in-service fleet.”

In response to a request for comment, Boeing provided a 29 April email from Scott Stocker, who leads the company’s 787 program, to employees in South Carolina where the 787 is assembled.

In the email, cited by the Reuters news agency, Stocker said that an employee saw what appeared to be an irregularity in a required 787 conformance test.

Stocker said in the email that after receiving the report, “we quickly reviewed the matter and learned that several people had been violating Company policies by not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed.”

Stocker said Boeing promptly informed the FAA “about what we learned and are taking swift and serious corrective action with multiple” employees.

He added, “our engineering team has assessed that this misconduct did not create an immediate safety of flight issue.”

Boeing said in April it expects a slower increase in the production rate and deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner widebody jets as the company wrestles with supplier shortages “on a few key parts.”

Boeing has faced a series of issues with its aircraft.

Last month whistleblower Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer who has worked for the company for four decades, told The New York Times that sections of the Dreamliner had been fastened together incorrectly.

He claimed the fault could cause aircraft to age prematurely, and ultimately break up in-flight.