A TUI Airways Boeing 787 Dreamliner made an emergency landing at an airport in the United Kingdom on Friday due to a “minor technical matter” that, according to reports, saw smoke fill the cockpit.
TUI flight 156 was bound for Punta Cana International Airport in the Dominican Republic at around 10:40 a.m. on Friday local time when it diverted back to Manchester Airport shortly after takeoff.
A spokesperson for the airline confirmed that the flight was diverted, providing minimal detail, saying that it was due to a “minor technical matter,” according to a statement obtained by various media outlets.
Airliners Live captured the aircraft’s departure and return in a live stream on its YouTube channel, reporting that the pilots allegedly squawked a general emergency and reported smoke in the flight deck.
The Epoch Times contacted TUI Airways for comment.
“The safety of our customers and crew is always our main priority. We will do everything we can to have them away on their holiday as quickly as possible,” the spokesperson said.
Safety concerns regarding manufacturing practices involving the 787 were recently brought to light by a Boeing whistleblower during a U.S. Senate hearing in Washington, D.C.
Boeing, a leading aircraft manufacturing company, has been under intense scrutiny this year due to a series of serious incidents involving its aircraft operated by several airlines.
Recently, two U.S. Senate committee hearings were held where witnesses questioned the company’s aircraft building procedures and the safety of its planes.
One of the key witnesses was Sam Salehpour, a current Boeing engineer who blew the whistle on the company’s alleged “shortcuts,” stating that he had been threatened for bringing safety concerns to his managers over several years.
“They are putting out defective airplanes,” Mr. Salehpour told the committee on April 17, alleging that Boeing was taking “shortcuts” to ramp up production.
In his opening statement, Mr. Salehpour said, “I have serious concerns about the safety of the 787 and 777 aircraft and I’m willing to take on professional risk to talk about them.”
The whistleblower said that when he raised his concerns, he was “ignored” and “told not to create delays.”
“I was told, frankly, to shut up,” he said.
He reported facing retaliation for expressing concern, including being transferred to another program and facing verbal abuse and threats. He also found a nail in his tire, which he believes was deliberately placed there. Though he noted that he had no proof that this happened while he was at work, an auto shop told him the nail was not embedded in a way that would happen while driving.
Mr. Salehpour noted that he had personally observed gaps in the fuselage of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner that exceeded specifications. Those gaps, he said, went unaddressed by the manufacturer 98.7 percent of the time in the cases he’d reviewed.
He revealed that Boeing used “unmeasured and unlimited” force to fix the misalignment between sections of its planes. This even included “people jumping on pieces of the aeroplane.”
Due to this, the gap between the sections ended up exceeding the specifications, “being much more than the 5/1000th of an inch (.12 of a millimeter) allowed by Boeing’s own standards.”
Another witness at the Senate hearing, former Boeing manager Ed Pierson said he believed there was a “criminal cover-up” regarding how a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 jet in the middle of January.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat this. This is a criminal cover-up,” Mr. Pierson told an investigative panel of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
Boeing has pledged to create an action plan to address safety concerns. However, Mr. Pierson said he believed continued investigation of the company was necessary.
The Epoch Times contacted Boeing for comment.
