THE video told the story as it made the rounds on the Internet: an emergency landing forces down a Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Japan…. These images were not what Chicago-based Boeing Co had in mind when it staked its future on the innovative new aircraft (list price: $207m apiece)…. Half of [the Dreamliners in service] … were grounded in the wake of incidents that raised safety concerns…. the Federal Aviation Administration [has] announced that it is grounding US-registered 787s pending proof that the batteries in question are safe.

Taken individually, some of the events aren’t particularly unusual: a cracked windshield, a fuel leak. But the spate of them — a half-dozen in little more than a week — is unusual…. Reliability rates for the 787 are on a par with other aircraft … Airlines that have been flying the 787 were doing safety checks every day … before any Dreamliners entered service, the aircraft faced a rigorous certification process…. federal regulators last week had ordered an in-depth safety review. A Qatar Airways official has described the issues as “teething” problems…. As of Wednesday … no [airline] had cancelled any of the hundreds of pending orders….

There are no absolute guarantees that all air travel is always safe … Still, we suspect that … the Dreamliner will prove to be a safe way to get from here to there — and because of its cutting-edge design, perhaps even safer than many of the other … commercial aircraft whose vapour trails encircle the globe every hour of every day. Living in Boeing’s home town, beside one of the world’s busiest airports, everyone in metropolitan Chicago should hope the 787’s “teething” pains quickly give way to the smooth and safe service that air travellers have a right to expect. — (Jan 17)