SOLD AS A "DREAMLINER".

Jim McNerney: A once in a decade if not once in a generation achievement of human ingenuity.

FOR AIRLINES IT'S CHEAP TO FLY.

FOR PASSENGERS IT OFFERS UNPARALLELED COMFORT.

"wow"

FOR BOEING IT PROMISED WINDFALL PROFITS. PRESIDENT OBAMA: The Dreamliner is the plane

of the future. BUT AL JAZEERA DISCOVERS A DARK SIDE TO THE

DREAMLINER: STAN SORSCHER: unimaginable that we could

be three years late, have a fleet grounding, have fires on the airplane.

OUR INVESTIGATION FINDS BOEING ALTERED ITS OWN QUALITY STANDARDS

COLE: They're shortchanging the engineering process to meet a schedule.

WE UNCOVER A WHISTLEBLOWER FIRED AS HE FOUGHT FOR SAFETY:

WOODS: There's no doubt there are bad repairs going out the door on the 787 aircraft.

WE GO BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, ONTO THE FACTORY FLOOR, TO REVEAL A WORLD BOEING KEEPS SECRET.

UC WORKER VIDEO: I wouldn't fly on one of these planes… Because I see the quality

of the fu**ing sh*t going down

around here.

TITLE: "BROKEN DREAMS: THE BOEING 787" JANUARY 16TH, 2013. TAKAMATSU, JAPAN - A BRAND-NEW

BOEING 787 DREAMLINER MAKES AN EMERGENCY LANDING. PASSENGERS KNEW THE PLANE WAS IN TROUBLE:

AOYA KAZUNORI/passenger: I looked outside and saw white smoke. That's when I realised

the danger. KEN'ICHI KAWAMURA/passenger: The burning plastic

smell got worse. / I thought we were going to crash.

TAKEUCHI KOJI/Fireman: On closer inspection, we observed a blue box that had expanded in

size. THE BLUE BOX WAS ONE OF THE DREAMLINER'S TWO

LITHIUM ION BATTERIES –THE MOST POWERFUL - AND RISKY - EVER PERMITTED

ON A COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT. Newsreader: It's just the latest in a string

of embarrassments for Boeing's state of the art aircraft.

NINE DAYS EARLIER A DREAMLINER BATTERY HAD CAUGHT FIRE IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

TWO BATTERY FAILURES IN LESS THAN TWO WEEKS. NEWS BITE: Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways

and Japan Airlines have grounded their fleets of Boeing 787

Dreamliners. JAPAN AIRLINES AND ANA HAD BEEN THE FIRST

TO FLY THE DREAMLINER - NOW THEY BECAME THE FIRST TO CANCEL ALL FLIGHTS.

NEWS BITE: Breaking news. The United States Federal Aviation…

WITHIN 24 HOURS, THE U.S. SAFETY REGULATOR, THE FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, GROUNDED

THE 787. NEWS BITE: All 50 of the new Boeing 787 Dreamliners

have now been grounded… THE REST OF THE WORLD FOLLOWED.

NO BOEING FLEET HAD EVER BEEN FORCED FROM SERVICE.

BUT ON JANUARY 17, 2013, THE DREAM WAS OVER. I'M WILL JORDAN.

FOR A YEAR, MY TEAM AND I HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATING THE DREAMLINER.

IT'S THE BOEING COMPANY'S BIG BET ON THE FUTURE… A PLANE CREATED TO SAVE FUEL, IMPROVE COMFORT,

AND BOOST PROFITS. AND ONE BUILT IN A NEW WAY - DESIGNED AND

MANUFACTURED BY SCORES OF COMPANIES AROUND THE GLOBE.

THE COMPANY THAT MAKES THE BATTERY IS GS YUASA, BASED IN KYOTO.

WE WANTED THEM TO TELL US WHAT HAD GONE SO WRONG.

SOUND: Security Guard in Japanese. Will: Al Jazeera. Guard: Al Jazeera. We wonder whether

you might be able to do

an interview? THEY REFUSED.

SPOKESWOMAN: We have a contract with Boeing so we can't, we can't tell any comments to

you. THE BATTERY IS ONLY ONE PART OF THE DREAMLINER'S

COMPLEX ELECTRICAL SYSTEM. THERE'S ALSO A CHARGER, MADE AT A FACTORY

THOUSANDS OF KILOMETRES AWAY. WHAT HAPPENED THERE, SHOWS BOEING LEARNT YEARS

AGO JUST HOW DANGEROUS A LITHIUM ION BATTERY COULD BE.

IN TUCSON, ARIZONA, WE TRACKED DOWN MICHAEL LEON – AN ELECTRICAL TECHNICIAN.

MICHAEL LEON / Former Securaplane technician: I've been working electronics since I was

17 years old, and I joined

the paratroopers and I was assigned to an electronics battalion of the 82nd airborne.

LEON: this is the first time I've been here since, since 2007. It's hard to believe that

this is what's left of a

three story engineering structure. ON A NOVEMBER MORNING IN 2006, LEON AND DOZENS

OF OTHER WORKERS CLOCKED IN AT SECURAPLANE - THE COMPANY THAT MAKES

THE BATTERY CHARGER. LEON: I started a pot of coffee then I went

into my lab and started working on my battery charging unit.

AND THEN IT HAPPENED. LEON: …and there was a very loud explosion

and all of a sudden I was lying on the floor and there it was coming out

the side of this battery. It was about that big, and it wasn't like fire. It looked like

a jet afterburner, like

jet exhaust. THE PROTOTYPE BATTERY SECURAPLANE WAS USING

TO TEST ITS CHARGER HAD EXPLODED. KIRK WINES / Former Securaplane technician:

I heard a very loud series of metallic rattling bangs. A kind of

shhhhhh. And just this jet of steam. LEON: The fire was literally rolling up the

walls around me and, and on the ceiling, I could just see it eating up

all around me… WINES: I know if that had happened on board

an aircraft, there, there would be no chance of survival.

IT WAS THE BIGGEST CHEMICAL FIRE IN TUCSON'S HISTORY.

A TEN THOUSAND SQUARE FOOT, THREE-STOREY STRUCTURE, BURNT TO THE GROUND.

RICHARD LUKSO / Securaplane founder: …after my building burned down, after that they realized

very emphatically

the danger of this chemistry. RICHARD LUKSO KNOWS WELL THE CHEMISTRY OF

THE DREAMLINER BATTERY. BOEING CHOSE THE MOST POWERFUL THERE IS…

BUT ALSO THE MOST VOLATILE. LUKSO:

they went to lithium cobalt which is way up here as far as danger.

LUKSO STEPPED DOWN AS SECURAPLANE PRESIDENT JUST BEFORE THE FIRE.

HE STARTED A NEW COMPANY TO MAKE LITHIUM ION BATTERIES FOR BUSINESS JETS.

LUKSO WAS A TRUE BELIEVER IN THE TECHNOLOGY. THEN HE BEGAN TESTING.

BULLET TEST VIDEO: Two, 3.3 amp hour series battery pack bullet test.

LUKSO WENT BEYOND EVEN THE LATEST INDUSTRY GUIDELINES - GOING SO FAR AS TO FIRE BULLETS

INTO BATTERIES, TO SEE IF

THEY COULD BE MADE SAFE FOR MILITARY APPLICATIONS. (BATTERY WALK/TALK) LUKSO: Yeah. You could

run the test that you feel that you need to meet the requirements to

be safe, but you also need to have a conscience that's going to tell you I want to do the

extreme." IN THE END, TESTING WITH A CONSCIENCE, LUKSO

COULDN'T MAKE THE BATTERIES MEET THE REQUIREMENTS. HIS NEW COMPANY FAILED.

LUKSO: …we became proficient in destroying batteries. And, and the more we learned about

it, the worst it got. I

mean, oh, my God, we kept digging and digging. We were saying I wonder what the rest of the

guys are doing. Well,

I guess we knew. BY REST OF THE GUYS HE MEANS BOEING.

AND THEY WERE TESTING TO A WEAKER STANDARD… ONE WRITTEN BY THE FAA SPECIFICALLY FOR THE

DREAMLINER.

IT'S THE FAA'S JOB TO REGULATE AIR SAFETY. BUT WHEN IT COMES TO BUILDING AIRPLANES, THE

FAA DELEGATES OVERSIGHT ALMOST COMPLETELY TO THE AIRCRAFT

MANUFACTURERS. WHEN IT COMES TO THE BATTERY AND BEYOND, BOEING

LARGELY POLICES ITSELF. THE BATTERIES PASSED BOEING'S TESTS.

IN LINE WITH THE FAA RULES, BOEING SAID THE 787 BATTERIES WOULD VIRTUALLY NEVER CATCH

FIRE ON BOARD AN AIRCRAFT. THEN, THEY FAILED TWICE IN JUST NINE DAYS.

BOEING HAS NOT UNCOVERED THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE FAILURES.

IT FOUND A WORK AROUND: A STRONG STEEL CASE, MORE INSULATION, AND AN EXHAUST FOR NOXIOUS

FUMES. SINNETT: …any fire will be impossible because

there's not enough oxygen to support combustion. BUT SEVERAL LEADING SCIENTISTS HAVE THEIR

DOUBTS. DONALD SADOWAY / MIT: I don't think it's a

sufficient fix / Even inside that steel box with all of its

fortifications, all of the elements are still there for fire.

DESPITE NOT KNOWING THE ROOT CAUSE, AMERICA'S SAFETY REGULATOR, THE FAA, WAS SATISFIED.

AND IN APRIL 2013, THE DREAMLINER WAS BACK.

BUT THIS STORY GOES FAR BEYOND A BURNING BATTERY.

IT BEGINS AT BOEING ITSELF.

"This is it. The first American commercial jet capable of economical transatlantic service.

The Boeing 707 jet

clipper.

SINCE ITS CREATION IN SEATTLE NEARLY A CENTURY AGO, BOEING HAD DEVELOPED A REPUTATION AS

A WORLD-CLASS ENGINEERING

COMPANY.

BUT IN 1997 BOEING CHANGED. IT MERGED WITH COMPETITOR, MCDONNELL DOUGLAS.

TWO COMPANIES WITH TWO VERY DIFFERENT BUSINESS MODELS.

STAN SORSCHER / Former Boeing engineer: the merger was all about transforming our successful

culture and business

model into the same business model that McDonnell Douglas had used unsuccessfully.

ABW-002 / 1:05 ABOULAFIA: you basically shortchange engineering,

you stop doing aggressive new product developments; you run the

business for cash.

THE NEW BOEING MOVED ITS HEADQUARTERS FROM SEATTLE, THE ONLY HOME THE COMPANY HAD EVER

KNOWN, TO CHICAGO. IT BEGAN SLASHING INVESTMENT IN RESEARCH,

IN ORDER TO CUT COSTS AND MAXIMISE WALL STREET RETURNS.

CYNTHIA COLE / Former Boeing engineer: I felt it was wrong, I felt it was going to take

the company in the wrong

direction and I thought that quality would suffer and the integrity of the product would

suffer. KEVIN SANDERS / Former Boeing manager: I feel

that that legacy and that history and that competence has been

hijacked by a bunch of corporate thugs. BY 2003, IT WAS TIME TO LAUNCH A NEW PLANE.

BUT BOEING'S NEW BOARD WAS RELUCTANT TO INVEST THE BILLIONS NEEDED.

DOMINIC GATES / Seattle Times: The board made it clear that they wanted this plane made

for less money. They

wanted it made for $5 billion and they wanted partners to come in and pay the rest.

ABW-002/ 9:35 Richard Aboulafia: It's expensive. So how

do you make that happen? Well, you promise them that you can do it for

less / and then worry about the consequences later.

BOEING CAME UP WITH A PLAN TO SAVE ITSELF MONEY.

IT WOULD PUSH THE COSTS ONTO ITS MAJOR SUPPLIERS. BOEING WOULD CALL THEM PARTNERS – AND THEY

WOULD DESIGN AND PAY FOR THE PARTS THEY BUILT. BOEING'S JOB WOULD BE TO ASSEMBLE THE PLANE.

GATES: It was almost as if at times you thought Boeing executives believed, well, maybe they

could sit in Chicago

and have / other companies / do things, and they would just rake in the money somehow

by putting it all together

and putting a Boeing sticker on it at the end.

RIGHT ON SCHEDULE, BOEING ROLLED OUT THE DREAMLINER ON SUNDAY JULY THE 8TH 2007, 7-8-7.

Tom Brokaw: Airlines with us today have made a big commitment to Boeing and to this airplane.

So far they have

ordered 677 of them. ABOULAFIA: I think in a lot of ways, July

8, 2007 was one of the more magical moments I've seen in the industry…

Brokaw: Watching us live around the world, broadcasting I'm told in 45 countries in 9

languages for the premier of

this very exciting Boeing 787 Dreamliner. GATES: We were all inside the factory with

artificial lighting, big stage, Tom Brokaw, huge screens… Then they

opened the doors of this giant assembly bay… ABOULAFIA: And in rolls this beautiful, beautiful