Japan’s two leading airlines, ANA and Japan Airlines, have grounded their fleets of Boeing 787s after an ANA flight using Boeing’s new plane was forced to make an emergency landing. This incident, reportedly triggered by a battery malfunction setting off a cockpit smoke alarm, is the latest in a series of recent scares. These include another battery-induced fire, an oil leak and a cracked windscreen. A United Airlines Dreamliner made an emergency landing last month owing to an unspecified mechanical problem.
The plane’s launch, moreover, was delayed by over three years. America’s Federal Aviation Administration has ordered an extensive review of the 787.
What the commentators said
“I’ve said before that we should cut Boeing some slack”, said Sam Mamudi on Barrons.com. The Dreamliner is not just an update of a previous model, “it’s essentially trying to reinvent the modern passenger aircraft”. Still, “at some point the problems have to stop”. Boeing is “nearing the tipping point where they need to regard this as a serious crisis”, agreed Richard Aboulafia of Teal Group.
What matters most with technical glitches like this, as Lex pointed out in the FT, “is the length of time required to fix them. Too long, and engineers allow for uncertainty and doubts about a project’s long-term viability to take hold.” So far, it seems that Boeing has the benefit of the doubt.
Other airlines are set to go ahead with their orders. But making money out of the Dreamliner won’t be easy even if the costs of the glitches aren’t exorbitant, noted Andrew Parker in the FT. Nick Cunningham of Agency Partners estimates that Boeing will have to sell 2,000 Dreamliners, which could take until the late 2020s, before it recoups its development costs.