CHARLESTON, S.C. — The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is looking into whether Boeing completed required inspections on certain 787 Dreamliner planes and whether company employees "may have falsified aircraft records."
The FAA opened its investigation after Boeing voluntarily told the FAA in April that it may not have completed inspections "to confirm adequate bonding and grounding where wings join the fuselage" on some of the planes.
Boeing is re-inspecting all 787 planes within the production line, according to the FAA. The company will be required to create a plan to address the planes already in service.
It does not an immediate safety issue, according to an internal memo to Boeing employees from Scott Stocker, the 787 vice president, general manager and site leader of Boeing South Carolina.
A Boeing employee brought attention to the issue after seeing something in the South Carolina factory he believed was not being done right, according to Stocker's memo. Boeing leadership learned several people were violating company policy by "not performing a required test, but recording the work as having been completed."
Though it does not create an immediate safety issue, according to Stocker, it will impact the company's customers as the planes will need to be tested out of sequence in the production line.
The issue raised over the 787 Dreamliner comes as the company faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of poor quality work from whistleblowers.
In late April, Boeing said it lost $355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter of the year.