Dreamliners: Boeing Reputation Is On The Line

The crisis talks at Boeing's commercial airplane division in Seattle must be intense. As every company knows, when a corporate crisis breaks, time is short before reputation is seriously dented.

On the one hand, Boeing must have been buoyed by the backing given to it by a number of its airline customers.

All Nippon Airlines - whose planes were the first to suffer faults - has said the issues won't stop it from rolling out the Dreamliner across its fleet.

Qantas has orders for 15 of the jets. It, too, has thrown its support behind Boeing.

In the UK, Virgin, BA and Thomson all have orders on their books. They have shown no public wobbles yet.

However, the decisions by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Japanese Aviation authorities and now the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to order the grounding of the planes is a massive blow.

Boeing is an American company and so it is no surprise that the initial FAA decision has prompted others to follow suit. LAN Airlines in Chile has three Dreamliners; all now on the ground. Air India has five of the jets; all grounded. LOT Polish's two planes are down too.

LOT Polish Airlines have been forced to ground their planes because of the European ruling. But in a statement sent to Sky News on Wednesday, the airline said it was confident their planes are safe because it didn’t buy the first generation of the jet.

"We would like strongly to underline that the first model, which was delivered to LOT Polish Airlines has fabric number 61. It means that at the stage of assembly of LOT's Dreamliners, proper modifications were made which reduce technical problems appearing in previously manufactured Dreamliners of the other carriers."

Ethiopian Airlines was the first African carrier to buy the plane. It was the third globally to receive it.

It has now taken the decision to ground its Dreamliners too.

The airlines which already own the Dreamliner knew that by buying the first generation of the plane they were increasing the risk of technical issues. Any new product will have teething problems.

The airlines took a call that the prestige of being among the first to own such a revolutionary airplane outweighed the risk of it going wrong.

But, the longer this crisis continues, the more likely it is that these airlines will think they have made the wrong call.

With 800 or so Dreamliners on order to airlines around the world, the worry for Boeing is this: if the problems are not solved and the sales contracts are not watertight, airlines may drop Boeing for its biggest rival Airbus.

Terrible news for a US company, great news for a European one.