The 787 Dreamliner commercial jets that Boeing Co. builds in North Charleston are among the world's safest in terms of accidents, a new report shows, with no fatalities or events involving extensive damage during more than a decade of flights.
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The Boeing 787 has similar safety features to the 777, but also features improvements such as a wider and longer aisle space for passengers and smoother engine takeoff capability which can reduce air turbulence and improve safety during takeoffs.
While the 787 Dreamliners have not been grounded, the FAA had ordered a halt to deliveries of the widebody jet between May of 2021 and July of 2022 as it looked into questions about quality control during its assembly process.
Therefore, the ERJ135/140/145 members of the family are among the safest airliners in history. The Airbus A340 is also one of the safest, with no fatal accidents involving any of the 380 units since its introduction in March 1993.
Airbus has the better safety record by far. In fact, Boeing's 737 alone has more crashes than all Airbus crashes combined. With that being said, it's important to ask yourself WHY Airbus has a better safety record than Boeing, and the reasons behind this aren't all bad.
The 787 was the first major commercial aircraft to use carbon fiber composite components in the fuselage and wing construction. These make the aircraft lighter but still offer high strength. New, more efficient engines. The 787 is designed to take either the General Electric GEnx or the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine.
The Air InsideThe cabin pressure on the 787 is higher and the humidity higher than other airplanes. Basically, passengers on board will feel like they are at an altitude of 6,000 feet, 2,000 feet lower than a standard flight.
To combat the sound of jet-blast from the rear of the engine, Boeing, General Electric, and NASA developed serrated edges called chevrons for the back of the nacelle and the engine exhaust nozzle. The chevrons reduce jet blast noise by controlling the way the air mixes after passing through and around the engine.
The more-electric architecture of the 787 Dreamliner family eliminates the pneumatic and bleed-air system. The electric system improves efficiency by extracting only the power actually needed during each phase of flight.
The Bottom Line: The Airbus A350-900 and Boeing 787-9 are very similar aircraft, suited for similar missions. As one would expect, the slightly larger A350-900 has a seat-mile cost advantage, while the 787-9 has an advantage in cost per block hour. These aircraft are competitive, and nearly tie in economic performance.
Boeing's annual Statistical Summary of Commercial Jet Airplane Accidents report shows the 787 is among a handful of planes that have never experienced a crash that resulted in a death or a hull loss — an aviation term referring to an accident that results in the total economic loss of an aircraft.
While passengers love the experience in the back, it's also a great place for the pilots to work. A number of features on the aircraft set it apart from other aircraft types. So, even when your working day can be 19 hours long, I'd much rather be doing it in a Dreamliner than any other type.
The 787's latest problem mirrors production issues discovered over 2020 and 2021 that included improperly fitted shimming that led to paper-thin gaps between surfaces on the Dreamliner's fuselage.
By far, the best seats to pick on United's Boeing 787 fleet (both the 787-8 and the 787-9) are seats 27A and 27L. Row 27 is the emergency exit row for the economy class cabin. This row is reserved as Economy Plus seating but the two “window” seats, A and L, are not considered Economy Plus seats.
Are small planes less safe than larger? It might seem that way, but there are other contributing factors. In a nutshell, the size of an airplane is not in any way linked to safety, explains Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at StretegivAero Research.