FAA says faulty Boeing 787 airplane pilot seats could cause sudden dives
The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into more than 700 Boeing 787 commercial airplanes for possible defective pilot seat switch caps or covers. The captain or first officer seat could unintentionally move, shutting off autopilot and leading to unexpected dive behavior mid-flight.
The administration determined that this root issue caused the March incident involving a LATAM Airlines 787 aircraft. An unexpected rapid descent caused dozens of passenger injuries.
The FAA says airlines reported five similar incidents since March and that it’s still investigating two of them.
In the airworthiness directive, Reuters says that more than 700 Boeing commercial 787 planes around the world must be inspected for “missing or cracked rocker switch caps or for cracked switch cover assemblies.”
There are 158 of these aircraft registered in the U.S.
The FAA must receive inspection results within 30 days. It also says airlines must perform the appropriate corrections.
In the U.S., Boeing continues to face mechanical and reliability issues across sectors, causing general public unease. For example, in January, a door plug flew off of an Alaska Airlines plane leaving Portland, decompressing the cabin and ripping the shirt off a teenage boy. The investigation revealed that no one at Boeing had installed bolts to secure the plug to the aircraft before delivering it to the airline.
Boeing’s challenges include its Starliner spacecraft, which has been stuck at the International Space Station since June.
Starliner is on its first crewed flight certification test. The Boeing craft docked at the ISS but suffered helium leaks and failed thrusters en route. The mission, which should have lasted eight days, stranded two NASA astronauts. The crew might be hitching a ride back to Earth with SpaceX early next year.