Boeing, Hit With $6.6 Million FAA Fine, Faces Much Bigger 787 Repair Bill - Sources

By Eric M. Johnson and David Shepardson

SEATTLE/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co will pay a $6.6 million to U.S. regulators as part of a settlement over quality and safety-oversight lapses going back years, a setback that comes as Boeing wrestles with repairs to flawed 787 Dreamliner jets that could dwarf the cost of the federal penalty.

Boeing is beginning painstaking repairs and forensic inspections to fix structural integrity flaws embedded deep inside at least 88 parked 787s built over the last year or so, a third industry source said.

The inspections and retrofits could take weeks or even up to a month per plane and are likely to cost hundreds of millions - if not billions - of dollars, depending to a large degree on the number of planes and defects involved, the person said.