Another aviation accident, another three-digit coded Boeing airplane. After years of bad press dogged Boeing’s 737 line, the 787 Dreamliner now faces its first major reputational hit following the fatal crash of Air India Flight 171 on Thursday. While the exact cause of the incident won’t be known for many months, the disaster immediately resuscitated whistleblower complaints about production flaws in the wide-body aircraft – and proved that new CEO Kelly Ortberg’s turnaround efforts at the aerospace behemoth still have a long way to go.

The maiden voyage for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner took place in 2009 at Paine Field, its flagship manufacturing facility in Everett, Washington. The Dreamliner doesn’t cut as dramatic a profile as the double-decker Airbus A380 and holds fewer passengers than the Boeing 777. But as the name suggests, it provides a smoother ride than its peers for long-haul flights with more comfortable cabin pressure, higher humidity, better air filtration, dimmable windows and anti-turbulence technology.

Like many global carriers, Air India has been stocking up on Dreamliners to replace an ageing fleet of 747s. While the Queen of the Skies is a beloved aircraft, the more fuel efficient Dreamliner is an ideal workhorse for flights between secondary airports, such as Thursday’s route from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick. Just last month, Ortberg joined president Donald Trump and Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for the signing of a $96bn (€83bn) purchase agreement that includes 130 Dreamliners – the largest order for a single model of jet in Boeing’s history.

The blockbuster deal in Doha papered over lingering concerns about the Dreamliner, concerns that the Air India accident has now propelled to the forefront. The same year as the 787’s inaugural flight, Boeing broke ground on a final assembly line in Charleston, South Carolina, that could handle wide-body aircraft – only the third such facility in the world after Everett, Washington, and Toulouse, France. The move was widely interpreted as a jab at Boeing’s unionised workforce in Washington state, as South Carolina state law prohibits compulsory union membership. The powerful machinists and engineering unions crowed that the lower-cost non-union labour in South Carolina would build inferior airplanes.

Indeed, five years ago, Boeing discovered small gaps in the joins that could weaken the fuselage and production halted for two years to correct the issue. In 2024, whistleblowers testified before a Senate committee that Boeing had taken shortcuts and was “putting out defective airplanes,” an allegation the company denied by pointing to the thorough revamping of how it makes the Dreamliner’s carbon-composite airframe. The Federal Aviation Administration, which in the past has been accused of being asleep at the switch and effectively letting Boeing certify its own aircraft, oversaw the process. Media were also invited into the Charleston plant to see the improvements first-hand.

The Dreamliner that crashed on Thursday, however, was built in Everett by union machinists and delivered in 2014 (before Charleston fully took over wide-body production). Any potential problems with the flagship wide-body jets cannot be reduced to a simple question of union or non-union labour. There are perhaps deeper structural issues facing the inordinately complex engineering of a modern aircraft such as the Dreamliner; it’s also possible that a fluke, such as a flock of birds, caused the crash, as with Jeju Air Flight 2216 in December. Boeing will, of course, dispatch a crack team to assist US and Indian authorities with the crash investigation. In the immediate aftermath, Ortberg has the toughest assignment for any aviation CEO – damage control in the wake of a fatal disaster that has shaken the confidence of the public. Whether he can pass this test with flying colours will prove the true mark of the man who has taken on one of the most daunting leadership roles in global business.

Scruggs is Monocle’s Seattle correspondent.