Passenger Travelling from UK to Goa Spots Tape on Plane’s Wings, Boeing Assures its Safe

A British passenger travelling from Manchester to Goa aboard a Boeing 787 flight was in for a surprise after he noticed pieces of tape on the exterior of the plane. “I’ve flown all around the world, but never seen anything like that before,” flyer David Parker told news outlets. The incident occurred last week when he and his fiance were travelling to Goa. Once sat inside the plane, flyer David Parker noticed a patchwork quilt of silver adhesive on the plane’s wings.

“It began peeling off mid-flight, I thought, ‘What the hell!? I pointed it out to my missus — she just said, ‘I wish you hadn’t shown me that’,” Parker said. “I was very surprised to see a patchwork of gaffer tape all over the wing halfway through the flight,” he further added.

Boeing in a clarification assured the public that the airplane adhesive is “speed tape” and claimed it is perfectly safe for use on airplanes. “Speed tape is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved material for some temporary fixes. The airplane’s structural integrity remains intact, and this has been determined to not be a safety of flight issue,” a Boeing spokesperson said. The Boeing spokesperson said the tape was used to fix “paint adhesion” issues that have caused problems in some Boeing 787s.

The company spokesperson explained that the sticky material is used to keep the paint from peeling off and not for holding the aircraft together. The spokesperson that the material of the stickers may look ‘unsightly’ but it is an interim fix and the authorities will soon begin applying a new black topcoat layer to all their planes during production.

Boeing has been plagued by safety concerns after a door panel blew off a Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet during a flight from Oregon to California in January. The US National Transportation Safety Board said the flight operated by Alaska Airlines appeared to be missing four key bolts.

Earlier this week, photos were released of the door plug and the bolts were removed to fix rivets that were damaged in the production process. Earlier in January, a Boeing plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Japan due to a crack in the cockpit window.