Originally Posted by
waito
I'm not fully convinced of Sam S. worries regarding 787 fuselage tolerances.
Found another opinion in an NYT article
Mr. Salehpour said the shortcuts that he believed Boeing was taking resulted in excessive force being applied to narrow unwanted gaps in the assembly connecting pieces of the Dreamliner’s fuselage. He said that force led to deformation in the composite material, which he said could increase the effects of fatigue and lead to premature failure of the composite.
John Cox, a former airline pilot who runs a safety consulting firm, said that while composites were more tolerant of excess force than metals, it was harder to see that composites had been stressed to the point that they would fail. “They just snap,” he said.
“The catastrophic in-flight breakup, yes, that’s a theoretical possibility,” Mr. Cox said. “That’s why you’d want to have the testing done to preclude that.”
Boeing’s tests are an appropriate step, Mr. Cox said, because “if the degradation goes far enough, that could potentially lead to a catastrophic failure.”
FAA Investigates Claims by Boeing Whistle-Blower About Flaws in 787 Dreamliner - The New York Times (nytimes.com)