Although the accident suffered this Thursday by an Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the first with fatalities involving this aircraft model, the event once again focuses attention on the recent safety record of the American aircraft manufacturer.

The accident occurred shortly after Air India flight AI171 took off from the airport in the Indian city of Ahmedabad to London. Indian authorities initially indicated that there were no survivors among the 242 people on board.

The crash is the first fatal accident involving a 787 Dreamliner, a twin-engine wide-body aircraft that began flying in 2009 and of which Boeing has built nearly 900 units.

But this accident occurs as the company is trying to recover from the serious image problems it has suffered since the incidents with the 737 Max model, another twin-engine model although smaller and narrow-body.

In 2018 and 2019, two planes of this type crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing 346 people.

Investigations launched after those two accidents found that Boeing had committed irregularities, such as the use of defective titanium and design deficiencies, in order to achieve certification of the planes.

In 2024, an Air Alaska 737 Max made an emergency landing when a panel covering one of the plane's emergency doors came loose mid-flight.

The incident worsened the company's image problems and caused a sharp drop in its revenue in the first six months of 2024.

That same year, a Boeing engineer reported serious safety deficiencies in the manufacturing process of the 787 Dreamliner to the authorities.

In May, the company reached a controversial agreement with the US Department of Justice that has allowed Boeing to avoid being found guilty of defrauding authorities for the 2018 and 2019 accidents.