Boeing has revealed today that around 55 of its flagship 787 Dreamliners “have the potential” to develop a fuselage shimming problem, but reiterated that the fault was being fixed.
Shims are used to fill in space between parts and industry publication Flightglobal has reported that improperly joined pieces had caused “parts of the aircraft’s carbon fibre structure to delaminate”.
The discovery of the issue is the latest in a line of relatively minor but persistent issues to plague the flagship models of both Boeing and Airbus.
“In all the airplanes that we built, up to airplane 55 in round numbers have the potential for the shimming issue,” said the Boeing’s vice president Jim Albaugh at a media roundtable in Singapore.
Highlighting that the problem would not impact on the delivery of 787 Dreamliners due this year, Albaugh added: “It’s very fixable and we are in the process of fixing the airplanes that are in flow, there is not a safety or flight issue on the airplanes that we’ve delivered and this is a long term issue that has to be addressed,” he said.