Is Air India's Dream(liner) turning into a lingering nightmare?

A string of mishaps with Boeing's Dreamliner recently are certain to be giving AI's management sleepless nights

On October 27, an Air India Dreamliner flight to New Delhi with 200 passengers on board had to abort its journey and return to Melbourne after takeoff due to a technical snag.

Barely 10 odd days before this incident, on October 15, a large panel on a brand new Dreamliner (VT-ANO), Air India's ninth Boeing 787, flew off mid-air. The aircraft landed safely despite the “gaping hole in the belly” as it was described by certain sections of the press.

Earlier this year Air India suffered a major setback, grounding its six Dreamliner fleet for nearly four months, after being ordered to do so by the country’s civil aviation regulator, which followed similar moves by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other regulators in Europe, South America and Japan. The moves were prompted by fires on two Dreamliner aircraft including a JAL 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport and an All Nippon Airways (ANA) flight which was forced to make an emergency landing due to battery issues. A United Airlines flight had also reported wiring problems on one of its six 787 fleet around the same period.

Regulators officially lifted the groundings between April and May this year after the problematic lithium-ion batteries were replaced with a revamped battery system. But the Dreamliner has continued to suffer a series of technical snags post the resumption of operations.

Last week, two JAL flights were diverted due to technical issues. In August ANA found damaged battery wiring on two 787 locator transmitters and in July, an Ethopian Airlines dreamliner suffered a fire while parked at Heathrow airport. Polish LOT and Norwegian Long Haul are among the other commercial carries that have reported issues recently, ranging from missing fuel filters to multiple breakdowns.

Boeing, while insisting that the Dreamliner is a safe airplane admitted on October 30 that it wasn’t pleased with its 97% reliability and was seeking to improve its track record. It also underplayed the AI panel issue saying “it never put the lives of passengers or the aircraft at risk as it was an access panel and not a pressurised one.”

Jitender Bhargava, AI’s former executive director, and also a scathing critic of the national carrier agrees that there is no reason for panic.
 
“I don’t think we can yet say that there is anything wrong with the aircraft. These aren’t incidents to be dismissed certainly, but one has to question whether these are manufacturing issues or maintenance related problems. The management needs to look into whether technical and standard operating procedures are being followed, and right training is being imparted to engineers of the 787 aircraft.”

But local maintenance neglect if any, doesn’t explain the repeated glitches that have hounded 787s aircrafts across the globe, resulting into billions of dollars of cost overruns, and penalties to customers.

“Newly launched aircraft have generally witnessed some kind of teething troubles. The A-380 also witnessed incidents in its first year of launch. A new aircraft basically makes news in the event of an incident. If an older aircraft had made an emergency landing, it wouldn’t have featured in your newspaper,” says Bhargava. “But nobody can dispute the fact that the Dreamliner has had a bit too many problems,” he admits.

These ‘too many problems’, if they persist, will turn the Dreamliner into a nightmare for India’s tottering national carrier that’s making a desperate bid to turn around its financial and operational performance. Air India has a total of 27 Dreamliners on order, of which nine have been delivered and a tenth is expected by the end of December. The Dreamliner is pegged to significantly improve performance through lower fuel, maintenance and operating costs as well as allowing AI to operate on current routes more profitably. It will also open up new markets in Australia, Europe and the US.

Air India has been showing substantial improvement in its performance metrics recently and inducting the Dreamliner on overseas routes is an integral part of its turnaround strategy which includes among other measures, an equity infusion of Rs 30,000 crore by 2021.

“If there are lengthy delays to the resumption of Dreamliner operations this will impact the viability of its international operations, at the very same time that its competitors are being strengthened as a result of foreign tie-ups.” Civil Aviation consultancy CAPA wrote in a report earlier this year when AI’s 787s were grounded.

While that setback is past AI, the recent string of mishaps with Boeing’s Dreamliner, one of the most advanced planes in the industry, are certain to be giving its management sleepless nights.