Traveloguy

Al Jazeera investigates quality control issues within the 787 programme. It also asks questions around the FAA's competence and the American government in general:

http://www.aljazeera.com/investigati...7/default.html

An interesting and eye opening piece from what has become one of the world prime news outlets.

CMHFlyerOH

This is interesting, but the teaser clip and website provides such little information it's hard to know the merit of their allegations.

Traveloguy

I'm surprised you did not see the link (which is very prominent) to the whole documentary from the website link I provided. The documentary youtube video is right at the top of the page, and is a 48 minute programme. Please find the direct link below in case this was not obvious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvkEpstd9os

PLeblond

Forbes has reviewed the piece

http://www.forbes.com/sites/airchive...sses-the-mark/

lloydah

Just watched it. Confirms my thoughts, never ever going to put a foot on one.

84fiero

The Forbes article is a pretty fair summation of the AJ expose, IMHO.

I'm avoiding the 787 in the first place because the seating in economy is so cramped with most carriers.

muishkin

Complete rubbish paragraph by Forbes there.

What incentive did GM have in making clunkers in the 80s and 90s? Just because there are no long term incentives for companies to release sub-par product doesn't meant companies never do it.

How are MH 370 and MH 17 evidences of the consequence of accepting unsafe aircraft? One is most likely due to deliberate diversion by a suicidal pilot and the other one got caught in the middle of an irredentist war.

brendog

You're joking, right? One cursory fluff piece and you refuse to fly on an aircraft type?

rstruthe

I think what they are reffering to is what happens after multiple disasters. MH was decimated after the two incidents. If Boeing had multiple incidents due to safety issues or quality issues with the aircraft, their passenger plane division would certainly be hurt or destroyed.

DenverBrian

Bad analogy. When GM makes a clunker, the car might not start, or might act up on the road, or very rarely cause an accident that might kill one or a few people. Immoral on the part of GM, but from a purely cost/benefit analysis, you could see where this behavior might occur.

If Boeing makes a clunker airplane, it'll only take one chain of events to kill 350 or more people - and should it be linked to a defect in the plane, it'll quite possibly put Boeing out of business. @:-)

WindowSeat123

There is also the market competition I think. Customers have many alternatives if they don't like GM's products (or the other Detroit big 3 automakers). That was how the Japanese autos made a killing against GM, Ford and Chrysler in the 80's and 90's. Back then, your average Toyota or Honda, while perhaps not very exciting to drive, was still heck of a lot more reliable and fuel efficient than your comparable Detroit products. Or if the customer prefer luxury performance vehicles, they can buy cars from the German automakers like Mercedes or BMW instead of Cadillac or Lincoln.

But not so for airliners. There is only one alternative, Airbus. Airlines don't have that choice. In this duopoly situation, the incentive is somewhat diluted I think. Each plane builder would much rather prefer to build defect-free planes of course, but given the lack of competition, that incentive and pressure to increase reliability is somewhat different I think.

The really strong incentive I think to keep both Boeing and Airbus straight are the legal liabilities (which can be watered down, mind you, given all those exemption clauses in the contract) and sufficient pressure from negative media exposure.

lloydah

Nope.
Not just one "cursory fluff piece" which I found to be far from fluffy or cursory. It's the record they have as well as that piece of journalism. If you can tell me that most, if not all, of the accusations, findings and bad practice that the news item found are incorrect then maybe I'd reconsider. But you can't can you. You don't know if it's all untrue any more than I know it's actual fact. I made my decision months ago.

I love Boeing and have rerouted to try the 747-8, travelled gazillions of miles on 777 and 747 and 737 etc etc but not this baby. Fixes they make are not problem solvers. Could quote from Hamlet here about the state of Denmark.

PLeblond

So everything else they make is great, just not the 787? The manufacturing philosophy of the company went haywire on one production line, but not any of the others?

moeve

I'd say the track record is also not that encouraging. Too many close calls to make me go out of my way to fly one.

lloydah

So it would seem, unless there's been (another) massive cover up which we don't know about. I don't recall the same amount of problems hitting the other models mentioned. Let's face it. If it had been Airbus and not a US company I'd put money on the US gov. closing airspace to them until it had been proved to be thoroughly reliable - which to my and many other minds it has not.