Air India Crash: What is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s safety record?

Shortly after the plane first started operating around 2013, Boeing took its fleet for inspection and resolved battery overheating issues.

An Air India plane bound for London Gatwick airport crashed shortly after take-off on June 12 in Ahmedabad. Flight AI171 was carrying 242 people, including 169 Indian nationals, 53 British, 7 Portuguese and 1 Canadian.

Here, Professor Ali Elham of the Aerospace and Space Administration at the University of Southampton speaks to The Conversation’s Paul Rincon about about the types of aircraft involved in the crash.

How does Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner differ from other passenger aircraft?

The Dreamliner was a major breakthrough in aircraft design. For example, it was the first Boeing aircraft to have more than 50% composite material in its structure. In this case, composites refer primarily to carbon fibers. These carbon fibers was replacing parts of the structure that would have been made with previous types of aluminum aircraft. This contributed to a significant reduction in the weight of the aircraft. The 787 had many innovations, very different from previous iterations of Boeing aircraft such as the 747 and 767.

The combination of new engines improved aerodynamics and significant weight losses have resulted in significant reductions in fuel consumption and carbon emissions compared to previous generation aircraft. Another feature was a significant increase in electrification at an increased battery level for board power systems.

What is the Dreamliner security record?

The Dreamliner has a very good security record and has been flying without any serious problems for many years. However, when the planes were new there were several incidents in 2013. In this incident, the aircraft’s lithium-ion batteries caused fires, including smoke and even a fire on the floor. There were no casualties and all the planes were able to land safely. However, Boeing grounds all Dreamliners each month.

Boeing intensively investigated the issues. They redesigned the batteries, redesigned the battery container, carried out an extensive certification process that allowed them to test and bring the Dreamliner back to the flight. Since then, to my knowledge, there have been no battery incidents.

Instead of maintaining power from the engine’s gas turbine, we used batteries. This performance is used in equipment, electronics and many other aircraft systems. Increased electrification – As gas turbines run with kerosene, they contribute to reducing battery aircraft power.

Do any details currently known about the crash narrow down the search for the cause?

It is too early to say anything about the cause of the crash, and as far as I know, no official details on this issue have been made public.

However, in many cases, there is a set of problems that are involved when investigating air accidents. One thing happens, then many events follow. So that may not be the cause here.

This crash occurred shortly after it started. Flight is the statistically safest transport type, but the initiation and landing stages are generally considered to be the most important. This is because the plane gets closer to the ground and reacts to technical issues and sudden changes less time and height. These phases are not naturally dangerous, but are at higher risk of accidents compared to height intersections.

What focuses on crash testing?

You will look into everything. I’m looking for a data recorder (black boxes) that should survive crashes. If these are restored, the investigator will be able to view all flight data and listen to all cockpit talks and get all the information from the control tower. You may find information from all this data. We will also examine the aircraft debris in detail. This is a different situation from the Boeing 737 Max property, following two crashes associated with a particular repeatable software error. When Dreamliner first joined the service, a battery overheating accident caused a systematic issue in which the supervisor temporarily grounded the fleet.

In this case, if investigators identify repeated technical issues representing immediate risks for the other 787, then grounding across the fleet would be unlikely.

I have to say that the 787 Dreamliner has a very good security record. There was a very long certification time at the US Federal Aviation Administration.