Placeholder Image

字幕表 動画を再生する

  • THE BOEING 787.

  • SOLD AS A "DREAMLINER".

  • Jim McNerney: A once in a decade if not once in a generation achievement of human ingenuity.

  • FOR AIRLINES IT'S CHEAP TO FLY.

  • FOR PASSENGERS IT OFFERS UNPARALLELED COMFORT.

  • "wow"

  • FOR BOEING IT PROMISED WINDFALL PROFITS. PRESIDENT OBAMA: The Dreamliner is the plane

  • of the future. BUT AL JAZEERA DISCOVERS A DARK SIDE TO THE

  • DREAMLINER: STAN SORSCHER: unimaginable that we could

  • be three years late, have a fleet grounding, have fires on the airplane.

  • OUR INVESTIGATION FINDS BOEING ALTERED ITS OWN QUALITY STANDARDS

  • COLE: They're shortchanging the engineering process to meet a schedule.

  • WE UNCOVER A WHISTLEBLOWER FIRED AS HE FOUGHT FOR SAFETY:

  • WOODS: There's no doubt there are bad repairs going out the door on the 787 aircraft.

  • WE GO BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, ONTO THE FACTORY FLOOR, TO REVEAL A WORLD BOEING KEEPS SECRET.

  • UC WORKER VIDEO: I wouldn't fly on one of these planesBecause I see the quality

  • of the fu**ing sh*t going down

  • around here.

  • TITLE: "BROKEN DREAMS: THE BOEING 787" JANUARY 16TH, 2013. TAKAMATSU, JAPAN - A BRAND-NEW

  • BOEING 787 DREAMLINER MAKES AN EMERGENCY LANDING. PASSENGERS KNEW THE PLANE WAS IN TROUBLE:

  • AOYA KAZUNORI/passenger: I looked outside and saw white smoke. That's when I realised

  • the danger. KEN'ICHI KAWAMURA/passenger: The burning plastic

  • smell got worse. / I thought we were going to crash.

  • TAKEUCHI KOJI/Fireman: On closer inspection, we observed a blue box that had expanded in

  • size. THE BLUE BOX WAS ONE OF THE DREAMLINER'S TWO

  • LITHIUM ION BATTERIESTHE MOST POWERFUL - AND RISKY - EVER PERMITTED

  • ON A COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT. Newsreader: It's just the latest in a string

  • of embarrassments for Boeing's state of the art aircraft.

  • NINE DAYS EARLIER A DREAMLINER BATTERY HAD CAUGHT FIRE IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

  • TWO BATTERY FAILURES IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. NEWS BITE: Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways

  • and Japan Airlines have grounded their fleets of Boeing 787

  • Dreamliners. JAPAN AIRLINES AND ANA HAD BEEN THE FIRST

  • TO FLY THE DREAMLINER - NOW THEY BECAME THE FIRST TO CANCEL ALL FLIGHTS.

  • NEWS BITE: Breaking news. The United States Federal Aviation

  • WITHIN 24 HOURS, THE U.S. SAFETY REGULATOR, THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, GROUNDED

  • THE 787. NEWS BITE: All 50 of the new Boeing 787 Dreamliners

  • have now been groundedTHE REST OF THE WORLD FOLLOWED.

  • NO BOEING FLEET HAD EVER BEEN FORCED FROM SERVICE.

  • BUT ON JANUARY 17, 2013, THE DREAM WAS OVER. I'M WILL JORDAN.

  • FOR A YEAR, MY TEAM AND I HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATING THE DREAMLINER.

  • IT'S THE BOEING COMPANY'S BIG BET ON THE FUTURE… A PLANE CREATED TO SAVE FUEL, IMPROVE COMFORT,

  • AND BOOST PROFITS. AND ONE BUILT IN A NEW WAY - DESIGNED AND

  • MANUFACTURED BY SCORES OF COMPANIES AROUND THE GLOBE.

  • THE COMPANY THAT MAKES THE BATTERY IS GS YUASA, BASED IN KYOTO.

  • WE WANTED THEM TO TELL US WHAT HAD GONE SO WRONG.

  • SOUND: Security Guard in Japanese. Will: Al Jazeera. Guard: Al Jazeera. We wonder whether

  • you might be able to do

  • an interview? THEY REFUSED.

  • SPOKESWOMAN: We have a contract with Boeing so we can't, we can't tell any comments to

  • you. THE BATTERY IS ONLY ONE PART OF THE DREAMLINER'S

  • COMPLEX ELECTRICAL SYSTEM. THERE'S ALSO A CHARGER, MADE AT A FACTORY

  • THOUSANDS OF KILOMETRES AWAY. WHAT HAPPENED THERE, SHOWS BOEING LEARNT YEARS

  • AGO JUST HOW DANGEROUS A LITHIUM ION BATTERY COULD BE.

  • IN TUCSON, ARIZONA, WE TRACKED DOWN MICHAEL LEONAN ELECTRICAL TECHNICIAN.

  • MICHAEL LEON / Former Securaplane technician: I've been working electronics since I was

  • 17 years old, and I joined

  • the paratroopers and I was assigned to an electronics battalion of the 82nd airborne.

  • LEON: this is the first time I've been here since, since 2007. It's hard to believe that

  • this is what's left of a

  • three story engineering structure. ON A NOVEMBER MORNING IN 2006, LEON AND DOZENS

  • OF OTHER WORKERS CLOCKED IN AT SECURAPLANE - THE COMPANY THAT MAKES

  • THE BATTERY CHARGER. LEON: I started a pot of coffee then I went

  • into my lab and started working on my battery charging unit.

  • AND THEN IT HAPPENED. LEON: …and there was a very loud explosion

  • and all of a sudden I was lying on the floor and there it was coming out

  • the side of this battery. It was about that big, and it wasn't like fire. It looked like

  • a jet afterburner, like

  • jet exhaust. THE PROTOTYPE BATTERY SECURAPLANE WAS USING

  • TO TEST ITS CHARGER HAD EXPLODED. KIRK WINES / Former Securaplane technician:

  • I heard a very loud series of metallic rattling bangs. A kind of

  • shhhhhh. And just this jet of steam. LEON: The fire was literally rolling up the

  • walls around me and, and on the ceiling, I could just see it eating up

  • all around meWINES: I know if that had happened on board

  • an aircraft, there, there would be no chance of survival.

  • IT WAS THE BIGGEST CHEMICAL FIRE IN TUCSON'S HISTORY.

  • A TEN THOUSAND SQUARE FOOT, THREE-STOREY STRUCTURE, BURNT TO THE GROUND.

  • RICHARD LUKSO / Securaplane founder: …after my building burned down, after that they realized

  • very emphatically

  • the danger of this chemistry. RICHARD LUKSO KNOWS WELL THE CHEMISTRY OF

  • THE DREAMLINER BATTERY. BOEING CHOSE THE MOST POWERFUL THERE IS

  • BUT ALSO THE MOST VOLATILE. LUKSO:

  • they went to lithium cobalt which is way up here as far as danger.

  • LUKSO STEPPED DOWN AS SECURAPLANE PRESIDENT JUST BEFORE THE FIRE.

  • HE STARTED A NEW COMPANY TO MAKE LITHIUM ION BATTERIES FOR BUSINESS JETS.

  • LUKSO WAS A TRUE BELIEVER IN THE TECHNOLOGY. THEN HE BEGAN TESTING.

  • BULLET TEST VIDEO: Two, 3.3 amp hour series battery pack bullet test.

  • LUKSO WENT BEYOND EVEN THE LATEST INDUSTRY GUIDELINES - GOING SO FAR AS TO FIRE BULLETS

  • INTO BATTERIES, TO SEE IF

  • THEY COULD BE MADE SAFE FOR MILITARY APPLICATIONS. (BATTERY WALK/TALK) LUKSO: Yeah. You could

  • run the test that you feel that you need to meet the requirements to

  • be safe, but you also need to have a conscience that's going to tell you I want to do the

  • extreme." IN THE END, TESTING WITH A CONSCIENCE, LUKSO

  • COULDN'T MAKE THE BATTERIES MEET THE REQUIREMENTS. HIS NEW COMPANY FAILED.

  • LUKSO: …we became proficient in destroying batteries. And, and the more we learned about

  • it, the worst it got. I

  • mean, oh, my God, we kept digging and digging. We were saying I wonder what the rest of the

  • guys are doing. Well,

  • I guess we knew. BY REST OF THE GUYS HE MEANS BOEING.

  • AND THEY WERE TESTING TO A WEAKER STANDARDONE WRITTEN BY THE FAA SPECIFICALLY FOR THE

  • DREAMLINER.

  • IT'S THE FAA'S JOB TO REGULATE AIR SAFETY. BUT WHEN IT COMES TO BUILDING AIRPLANES, THE

  • FAA DELEGATES OVERSIGHT ALMOST COMPLETELY TO THE AIRCRAFT

  • MANUFACTURERS. WHEN IT COMES TO THE BATTERY AND BEYOND, BOEING

  • LARGELY POLICES ITSELF. THE BATTERIES PASSED BOEING'S TESTS.

  • IN LINE WITH THE FAA RULES, BOEING SAID THE 787 BATTERIES WOULD VIRTUALLY NEVER CATCH

  • FIRE ON BOARD AN AIRCRAFT. THEN, THEY FAILED TWICE IN JUST NINE DAYS.

  • BOEING HAS NOT UNCOVERED THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE FAILURES.

  • IT FOUND A WORK AROUND: A STRONG STEEL CASE, MORE INSULATION, AND AN EXHAUST FOR NOXIOUS

  • FUMES. SINNETT: …any fire will be impossible because

  • there's not enough oxygen to support combustion. BUT SEVERAL LEADING SCIENTISTS HAVE THEIR

  • DOUBTS. DONALD SADOWAY / MIT: I don't think it's a

  • sufficient fix / Even inside that steel box with all of its

  • fortifications, all of the elements are still there for fire.

  • DESPITE NOT KNOWING THE ROOT CAUSE, AMERICA'S SAFETY REGULATOR, THE FAA, WAS SATISFIED.

  • AND IN APRIL 2013, THE DREAMLINER WAS BACK.

  • BUT THIS STORY GOES FAR BEYOND A BURNING BATTERY.

  • IT BEGINS AT BOEING ITSELF.

  • "This is it. The first American commercial jet capable of economical transatlantic service.

  • The Boeing 707 jet

  • clipper.

  • SINCE ITS CREATION IN SEATTLE NEARLY A CENTURY AGO, BOEING HAD DEVELOPED A REPUTATION AS

  • A WORLD-CLASS ENGINEERING

  • COMPANY.

  • BUT IN 1997 BOEING CHANGED. IT MERGED WITH COMPETITOR, MCDONNELL DOUGLAS.

  • TWO COMPANIES WITH TWO VERY DIFFERENT BUSINESS MODELS.

  • STAN SORSCHER / Former Boeing engineer: the merger was all about transforming our successful

  • culture and business

  • model into the same business model that McDonnell Douglas had used unsuccessfully.

  • ABW-002 / 1:05 ABOULAFIA: you basically shortchange engineering,

  • you stop doing aggressive new product developments; you run the

  • business for cash.

  • THE NEW BOEING MOVED ITS HEADQUARTERS FROM SEATTLE, THE ONLY HOME THE COMPANY HAD EVER

  • KNOWN, TO CHICAGO. IT BEGAN SLASHING INVESTMENT IN RESEARCH,

  • IN ORDER TO CUT COSTS AND MAXIMISE WALL STREET RETURNS.

  • CYNTHIA COLE / Former Boeing engineer: I felt it was wrong, I felt it was going to take

  • the company in the wrong

  • direction and I thought that quality would suffer and the integrity of the product would

  • suffer. KEVIN SANDERS / Former Boeing manager: I feel

  • that that legacy and that history and that competence has been

  • hijacked by a bunch of corporate thugs. BY 2003, IT WAS TIME TO LAUNCH A NEW PLANE.

  • BUT BOEING'S NEW BOARD WAS RELUCTANT TO INVEST THE BILLIONS NEEDED.

  • DOMINIC GATES / Seattle Times: The board made it clear that they wanted this plane made

  • for less money. They

  • wanted it made for $5 billion and they wanted partners to come in and pay the rest.

  • ABW-002/ 9:35 Richard Aboulafia: It's expensive. So how

  • do you make that happen? Well, you promise them that you can do it for

  • less / and then worry about the consequences later.

  • BOEING CAME UP WITH A PLAN TO SAVE ITSELF MONEY.

  • IT WOULD PUSH THE COSTS ONTO ITS MAJOR SUPPLIERS. BOEING WOULD CALL THEM PARTNERSAND THEY

  • WOULD DESIGN AND PAY FOR THE PARTS THEY BUILT. BOEING'S JOB WOULD BE TO ASSEMBLE THE PLANE.

  • GATES: It was almost as if at times you thought Boeing executives believed, well, maybe they

  • could sit in Chicago

  • and have / other companies / do things, and they would just rake in the money somehow

  • by putting it all together

  • and putting a Boeing sticker on it at the end.

  • RIGHT ON SCHEDULE, BOEING ROLLED OUT THE DREAMLINER ON SUNDAY JULY THE 8TH 2007, 7-8-7.

  • Tom Brokaw: Airlines with us today have made a big commitment to Boeing and to this airplane.

  • So far they have

  • ordered 677 of them. ABOULAFIA: I think in a lot of ways, July

  • 8, 2007 was one of the more magical moments I've seen in the industry

  • Brokaw: Watching us live around the world, broadcasting I'm told in 45 countries in 9

  • languages for the premier of

  • this very exciting Boeing 787 Dreamliner. GATES: We were all inside the factory with

  • artificial lighting, big stage, Tom Brokaw, huge screensThen they

  • opened the doors of this giant assembly bayABOULAFIA: And in rolls this beautiful, beautiful