Welcome To The Dreamliner Nightmare

After a three-year delay in actually receiving the Dreamliner from Boeing, the first airline to take delivery of the airplane of the future should be flying sky high. Instead ANA is reassuring passengers that everything is A-OK for the second time in six weeks.
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How embarrassed is the All Nippon Airways ground crew in Japan after towing the brand spankin' new, close-to-$200-million Dreamliner into a passenger boarding bridge on Thursday? Oh, I'd say that kind of a ding requires something north of a "my bad" and south of harakiri.

From what I read, the plane checked out good as new and will fly -- as scheduled -- and in the Japanese-style -- that is, fully packed -- on Wednesday from Tokyo to Nagasaki.

Remarkably, no cameras captured this nightmare-inducing boo-boo, but this is what the plane looked like on September 28, when the nearly-all-composite twin-engine airliner landed at Tokyo International Haneda Airport.

After a three-year delay in actually receiving the Dreamliner from Boeing, the first airline to take delivery of the airplane of the future should be flying sky high. Instead ANA is reassuring passengers that everything is A-OK for the second time in six weeks.

On September 6, it shook up a planeload of travelers when a pilot trying to open the cockpit door to readmit the captain after a potty break accidentally turned the wrong knob, flipping the 737 on its head.

This latest episode had the ground crew towing the plane this close to the passenger boarding gate, scraping the engine cowling. Does it get any worse? Well kinda: Underneath the cowling beats the heart of a Trent 1000 engine from Rolls Royce, another aviation company that can't seem to catch a break.

Welcome to my Dreamliner nightmare? Nah, ANA says the damage was slight and that plane is good-to-go on its charter flight next week. Just no more wasabi before bedtime between now and then, okay?

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