From Reuters:
(Reuters) - Boeing Co rolled out the Dreamliner's chief engineer to try to quell concerns about the new jet following three mishaps in as many days, including an electrical fire that caused severe damage to a plane.
At a news conference on Wednesday, the engineer, Mike Sinnett, defended the 787, the world's first plastic plane, and said its problem rates are at about the same level as Boeing's successful 777 jet.
Relatively few technical problems prevent 787s from leaving a gate within 15 minutes of scheduled departure time, he said. "We're in the high 90 percents," he said. "We're right where the 777 program was" at this stage.
The prevalence of more significant issues, such as a battery fire, is in the same order of magnitude as previous programs, he added. "There's no metrics that are screaming at me that we've got a problem."
Sinnett explained in detail how the lithium ion battery system that burned on Monday was designed by his team to be safe and prevent smoke getting into the cabin in the event of a fire during a flight. "I am 100 percent convinced that the airplane is safe to fly," he said.
Asked why smoke entered the cabin on Monday, Sinnett said the plane lacked cabin pressure to expel smoke because it was on the ground. In that scenario, "We expect that there would be sufficient time to evacuate the plane safely," Sinnett said.
This Sinnett chappie (reportedly the B787 Chief Engineer) doesn't exactly inspire confidence with his comment that fails to acknowledge that a lithium ion Battery fire is a metric that should be screaming at him and that Boeing does indeed have a critical safety of flight issue with the B787.
Sinnett sounds to me more like a political spin doctor than an engineer.
Hopefully, the real Boeing engineers working for him will provide the corrective action to return the B787 to a safe air transport vehicle and bolster Boeing's reputation for safety before corporate profit.