Air India crash is first involving Boeing’s long-range 787 Dreamliner, 1110 long-haul planes in use globally

The deadly Air India crash Thursday is the first involving Boeing’s 787, a fuel-efficient jet the manufacturer introduced in 2011 as the future of long-distance travel and dubbed the Dreamliner.

Boeing calls the plane the best-selling large airliner ever, crediting it with opening hundreds of new routes around the globe. On Thursday, a 787-8 carrying 242 passengers and crew members slammed into a dorm for medical students shortly after taking off from Ahmedabad airport in India.

The crash investigation is likely to focus on actions of the pilots, the airline, maintenance of the jet and Boeing, which has struggled for years to fully recover from two air disasters involving a smaller jet, the 737 Max, in 2018 and 2019. Those crashes, which combined killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia, were linked to a design flaw and rocked confidence in the century-old plane manufacturer.

US lawmakers found in a 2020 report that a battery fire on a 787 in 2013, also linked to design problems, foreshadowed manufacturing problems that contributed to the 737 crashes. But in the years since the battery fire, the 787 has had a good safety record with no fatal crashes, according to a database of aviation incidents managed by the Flight Safety Foundation.

Boeing says the aircraft has carried 1 billion passengers. More than 1,100 Dreamliners are in service with airlines around the world, serving some of the longest routes, and Boeing says it has a backlog of 889 more.

Aviation analyst Henry Harteveldt said the 787 Dreamliner is one of the “workhorses” for airlines’ long-haul operations, operated by more than 70 carriers. He said airlines value the flexibility and reliability of the various models, while speaking highly of the aircraft’s amenities, which include larger than average windows.

Air India has 34 in its fleet, according to Cirium. The jet that crashed was manufactured in the Seattle area in 2013 and delivered to Air India in early 2014. Since then it had taken off and landed more than 8,000 times, according to data analytics firm Cirium.

The airline was founded in 1932 and was taken over by the Indian government in 1953. In recent years, the carrier struggled financially amid growing competition from private carriers and budget upstarts, but it has generally had a good record on safety. The last fatal crash involving the carrier was in 2020 when 21 people died after an Air India Express flight skidded off a runway in southern India. In 2011, it faced allegations from its own pilots that the company failed to pay them on time and forced them to fly when ill.

In 2022, the carrier was sold to Tata Sons. The new owners have invested heavily in the carrier, launching an aggressive push to upgrade training for pilots and flight attendants and to improve maintenance procedures, Mr Harteveldt said. The carrier also has ordered hundreds of new jets to replace older planes.

It was too early to say Thursday morning whether any issues at Boeing will be shown to be a factor in the crash. The US National Transportation Safety Board said it was leading a team of American investigators to India to assist in the investigation, which is standard practice for crashes involving a U.S. manufacturer.

“We are in contact with Air India regarding Flight 171 and stand ready to support them,” Boeing said in a statement.

“Our thoughts are with the passengers, crew, first responders and all affected.”

A confirmation hearing this week for President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Federal Aviation Administration served as a reminder that Boeing is still under scrutiny by regulators and lawmakers after the 2018 and 2019 crashes and an incident last year in which a panel blew off the side of a 737 Max.

The nominee, Bryan Bedford, the chief executive of regional airline Republic Airways, told Senate committee members Wednesday that he would focus on holding Boeing accountable for producing high-quality planes safely and for listening to its workforce.

The Max crashes cast a long shadow over Boeing. The jet, an updated version of its popular 737, was grounded worldwide for almost two years as the company worked to fix design problems and convince regulators that the planes were safe. No one was killed in last year’s door panel blowout, but it was linked to an error on Boeing’s production line, and the FAA imposed a cap on the number of Maxes it could produce each month.

A crash in December that killed 179 people at a South Korean airport involved an older version of the Boeing 737. It has been linked to the jet colliding with birds before making an emergency landing on a runway that ended at a concrete barrier.

The wide-body 787 has also recently suffered from manufacturing problems related to its lightweight carbon-fibre composite structure - an innovation that made the jet lighter and more fuel efficient.

The FAA said last year that it was investigating claims by a company whistleblower that sections of the jets had been fastened together improperly, but Boeing said the issues raised did not pose a safety risk.

As part of its turnaround efforts, Boeing hired a new chief executive, Kelly Ortberg, last summer, putting an engineer in charge of the company. Previous leaders had moved the company’s headquarters to Chicago and then the Washington region, but Mr Ortberg based himself in its traditional Seattle home.

Boeing avoided criminal culpability last month in a case brought in connection with the 737 crashes that accused the company of misleading regulators. It struck a deal with prosecutors at the Justice Department that involved admitting to some of its misconduct and establishing a $US444.5 million ($680 million) fund for the victims. In exchange, a criminal charge would be dropped, angering the families of the victims who wanted the company held to account in court.

The same month, Ortberg joined Trump in Doha, Qatar, to announce that Qatar Airways had placed an order for 130 of Boeing’s 787s and dozens of other jets, a purchase that could be worth as much as $96 billion.

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