The deadly crash of Air India Flight 171 last week has centered renewed scrutiny on the airplane's manufacturer, Boeing, but this time it's the 787 Dreamliner in investigators' sights. The accident, which killed over 270 people, was the first fatal Dreamliner crash. 

More issues for Boeing
Worries about the Dreamliner are not entirely new, as the planes have been the "subject of heightened scrutiny after whistleblowers raised concerns about manufacturing and quality issues going back many years," said The New York Times. Despite these concerns, the plane had never been involved in a fatal crash in the 14 years it has been flying.

The cause of the Air India crash remains unclear, and "multiple factors, including bird strikes, pilot error, manufacturing defects or inadequate maintenance, can play a role in aviation accidents," said the Times. Determining the cause of the accident could take "months or years." But Boeing "stands ready to support the investigation," said Boeing President and CEO Kelly Ortberg in a statement. 

This is only the latest in a string of issues for Boeing, which has faced public ire over safety incidents in recent years. Just weeks before the Air India crash, Boeing "agreed to pay $1.1 billion in a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice to avoid prosecution over the two crashes that together killed 346 people" on 737 Max jets, said The Guardian. 

Recent problems with the Dreamliner have also drawn attention. American Airlines decided to ground one of the planes "due to serious maintenance problems," said Simple Flying just two days before the Air India crash. Another Dreamliner "made four emergency landings in less than a month earlier this year," said The Telegraph.

New questions
The Dreamliner debacle "comes at a critical moment for the hobbled American icon, which has been buffeted by a succession of crises in recent years," said The Wall Street Journal. The Air India crash will likely "raise fresh questions" about Boeing just as it "begins to emerge from the fallout of a high-profile incident early last year when a door plug on a recently delivered 737 Max fell off during a flight." 

Boeing has already been dealing with significant losses in recent years, having "posted a 2024 loss of $11.8 billion," said CBS. Its total losses have topped $35 billion since 2019.

Even the rich and powerful may not be safe from the world of international espionage, as recent reports have alleged that countries are using multimillion-dollar superyachts in spy operations. Wealthy oligarchs have long been both targets and tools of espionage, especially from authoritarian states. But the apparent superyacht spy tie-in marks a new chapter in this saga.

How are superyachts connected with spying?
Most notable is Russia, which is reportedly "using its unrivaled underwater warfare capabilities to map, hack and potentially sabotage critical British infrastructure," said The Sunday Times. Much of this seems to involve the use of superyachts for surveillance.

This is noteworthy given that many of these oligarchs' yachts have moon pools, which are openings in the bottom of a ship's hull that can be "used covertly to deploy and retrieve deep-sea reconnaissance and diving equipment," said the Times. This type of surveillance is said to go back even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Beyond the yachts themselves, Chinese officials may be spying on superyacht manufacturers, in particular luxury shipbuilder Ferretti SpA, according to a Bloomberg report. In 2024, the "relationship between senior managers at Ferretti, one of the world's leading designers of yachts for the super-rich, and its biggest shareholder," the Chinese conglomerate Weichai group, had "soured over a share-buyback program."

As this continued, Ferretti's executive director, Xu Xinyu, "discovered he was being followed and found surveillance devices in the company's Milan offices," said Bloomberg. Similar devices were reportedly also found in the offices of Ferretti's board secretary and Chinese-Italian translator. 

How are other countries fighting back?
Countries are working to minimize the impact of superyachts that may be compromised by spying. Alongside NATO and other European allies, the U.K. is "strengthening our response to ensure that Russian ships and aircraft cannot operate in secrecy near the U.K. or near NATO territory," a spokesperson for the British Defense Ministry told Newsweek.

There are ways superyacht owners can protect their vessels from intrusions. This includes installing a sonar system that "detects, tracks and identifies divers and underwater vehicles approaching a superyacht," said Forbes, as well as an anti-drone device that "detects and identifies commercial drones."