Michael O’Leary has revealed that a team of engineers check every Boeing aircraft that Ryanair buys because of concerns over the manufacturing process.
The Ryanair boss said previous problems with Boeing jets fresh off the production line meant that every aircraft undergoes a safety inspection before it is allowed to fly under the carrier’s name.
His remarks came following a crash involving an American-made London-bound Boeing 787 Dreamliner that took off from Ahmedabad, India, on Thursday. The aircraft plummeted shortly after departure, resulting in fatalities for nearly everyone aboard, with only one survivor.
There is no suggestion yet that Boeing was at fault in the Air
India
accident. Mr O’Leary, whose company exclusively operates Boeing planes and is considered one of the globe’s most secure budget airlines, mentioned that a group of 30 inspection engineers supervised Boeing’s production processes in the U.S.
Once a new aircraft arrives at Ryanair’s Irish headquarters, local engineers then conduct a 48-hour inspection.
“Once we are entirely content, only then does it come into effect,” Mr O’Leary informed The Times.
We received airplanes, but upon returning them to Dublin, we discovered spanners and tools hidden beneath the floorboards.
His worries intensified following a call from an anonymous Boeing engineer who became a whistleblower yesterday evening. The individual urged for a covert inquiry into potential safety issues related to the 787 Dreamliner to be made public.
Sam Salehpour claimed last year that ‘shortcuts’ were used in manufacturing the aircraft’s fuselage and that engineers embedded drilling debris between joints in more than 1,000 planes, weakening the structure, shortening the planes’ lifespan and risking ‘catastrophic events’.
A report by America’s Federal Aviation Authority into his claims has yet to be made public.
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