The deepening Dreamliner crisis saw a 787 Qatar Airways flight from Heathrow cancelled yesterday as safety fears over the plane intensified.
Qatar Airways did not give reasons for the grounding – nor the fate of its other four Boeing 787 planes – following a string of safety issues involving the new aircraft.
Qatar Airways is the first airline to operate the new Dreamliner in the UK on a daily return service between London and Doha.
Starting February 1, Qatar Airways plans to deploy the 787 on all daily flights from Doha to Perth. It will be the first airline to operate Dreamliner flights to and from Australia.
The BBC’s business reporter, Jorn Madslien, writes that
as the number of worrying (Dreamliner) occurrences has increased, "the chorus of analysts’ dismissals – which have generally described them as to-be-expected teething problems that are supposedly commonplace whenever an all-new aircraft goes into service – is beginning to sound hollow to many".
"Suggestions that each situation has merely uncovered easy-to-fix faults, clearly raises the question why were they not both discovered and fixed before the plane went into commercial service in October 2011?"
Dreamliners in Use
Air India: 5
All Nippon Airways: 17
Ethiopian Airlines: 4
Japan Airlines: 7
LAN Airlines: 3
Lot Polish Airlines: 2
Qatar Airways: 5
United Airlines 6
Total: 49
