Speech – "Boeing 787 Design and Production Review"

Press Conference

Thank you for coming today.

As the Secretary said, safety is our mission, and we take this responsibility very, very seriously.

The Dreamliner is a new aircraft with many innovations. A total of 50 are in service worldwide, with six delivered to a U.S. carrier.

From day one, we have worked with Boeing to certify these systems and further ensure that this innovative aircraft meets our high level of safety for the flying public.

We believe this is a safe aircraft. To validate the work conducted during the certification process, we are going to work with Boeing to conduct a review of all critical systems of the 787, including design and production.

A team of experts will jointly evaluate these aspects of the airplane. We want to make sure that the approved quality control procedures are in place and that all of the necessary oversight is done.

We want to see the entire picture and do not want to simply focus on individual events. We want to determine the root causes of these recent events so they won’t happen again.

We will put an emphasis on the electrical system in the airplane. This includes components such as batteries and power distribution panels. We’ll also look at how the electrical and mechanical systems of the airplane interact with one another.  

Last month, we issued an airworthiness directive that required inspection of fuel line couplings in the engine pylons to verify that they were correctly assembled and installed.

That work has been completed on all 787s operated by the U.S. carrier.

Again, I want to emphasize that the 787, like all aircraft, has numerous back-up systems and redundancies, and these are there for safety.

The Boeing 787 is an innovative aircraft and the FAA logged 200,000 hours of technical work on the type certification.  Our crews flew on numerous test flights.

We’re confident about the safety of this aircraft. But we are concerned about these incidents and we will conduct this review until we are satisfied.

Before we open it to questions, I’d like to introduce the president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Ray Conner.