All 242 people on board are believed to have perished in the accident involving an Air India plane en route from India to London. This would be the worst accident involving the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which is produced by Boeing. It would also be the deadliest plane accident since 2014, when a Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down over Ukraine.
The American company has, however, been hit by a series of accidents in recent years. The most well-known were those that occurred in 2018 and 2019, with 189 and 157 fatalities respectively. These involved Boeing's 737 Max 8 model, which meant that the specific aircraft model was grounded for several years.
Boeing was again in a crisis situation in January last year when a door plug came loose on an Alaska Airlines plane at an altitude of several thousand meters. Pictures showed passengers sitting in the plane while it was forced to make an emergency landing at the same time as there was a large hole where the door had previously been attached to the aircraft body. No human was harmed.
It has also been a dark year for the aviation industry as a whole, with 67 people killed in January when a passenger plane and a military helicopter collided over Washington DC.
The plane accident in India also comes just a few days before the annual air show in Paris, one of the most important events in the industry and traditionally a time when airlines announce billion-dollar orders from manufacturers such as Boeing.
