As Boeing PR Stresses Safety, 787 Remains Grounded

While Boeing presses the features of this system, investor money is wasted. Public and media attention continue to be focused on the safety record of Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, which has fire problems with the lithium ion battery on the plane. The National Transportation Safety Board started to review these, and the 787 has been taken out of service and remains so.

The Runway Situation Awareness Tools public relations push is an example of how large public companies try to steer customer attention away from extremely severe problems. In the case of Boeing, the targets are airlines, safety officials and consumers, all of which are worried about the 787’s safety and not runway safety.

The Runway Situation Awareness Tools are barely worth the expense of promoting them, based on assessment of their actual use. The two aircraft manufacturers announced that:

To significantly reduce runway excursions in the near term, Boeing and Embraer will provide customers with new pilot procedures and a training video on landing performance. In the longer term, the companies will also develop joint technology and systems for the flight deck to improve pilot information about approach and landing.

The training video is likely to be of little use to veteran airline pilots. In other words, the Runway Situation Awareness Tools probably do little to advance safety at all.

What did Boeing spend on the public relations about its runway safety system? There is no way to know from outside the Boeing public relations and management offices. Certainly the figure is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, every dime of which is wasted while Boeing is under the cloud of the 787 disaster.

Boeing should heed the adage: “No one can fool all of the people, all of the time.”