The US Federal Aviation Administration has issued Airworthiness Directive AD 2026-17-02, requiring inspections of certain Boeing 787-8, 787-9, and 787-10 aircraft due to potential fatigue cracks in critical wing structures. Published in the Federal Register on August 27, the directive takes effect on October 1 and affects 17 US-registered airplanes and 77 worldwide out of a global fleet exceeding 1,100 Boeing 787s.
The inspection requirement follows a 2019 discovery that an outdated method was used to measure shims at lower side-of-body splice plates during production. Boeing stated that the manufacturing issue has since been corrected in production and that affected aircraft may continue normal operations.
