A senior Boeing engineer said Wednesday the plane maker has "extreme confidence" in the 787 Dreamliner, despite three of mishaps this week, including a battery fire.
"Clearly there are issues that … we have to work through," Mike Sinnett, vice president and chief project engineer for the Boeing 787, told reporters. "And just like any new airplane program, we work through those issues and we move on. So while we're happy with the level of the performance of the airplane, we're not satisfied until our reliability and our performance is 100 percent."
"We're not happy until we're perfect," he added.
Earlier Wednesday, airlines played down safety concerns over the 787, with Qatar Airways' chief executive dismissing recent mishaps as "teething problems."
Boeing's stock closed up 3.55 percent Wednesday after sinking nearly 5 percent over the previous two days, its biggest such loss in 13 months.
A fuel leak forced a Boeing 787 operated by Japan Airlines to return to the gate at Boston's Logan International Airport on Tuesday, a day after a fire ignited in the cabin on a JAL Dreamliner at the same airport. A firefighter sustained minor injuries.
Boeing said it traced the fire to a lithium ion battery in the planes auxiliary power unit. (Read More: Fire Puts Dreamliner Under Scrutiny.)
The National Transportation Safety Board said an auxiliary power unit battery had severe fire damage, and heat damage was found near the unit in the rear electronics bay. The investigation is continuing. (Read More: After Boeing 787 Fire, Another Dreamliner Has Fuel Leak )
"Nothing that we've seen in this case indicates a relationship to any previous 787 power system events, which involved power panel faults elsewhere in the aft electrical equipment bay," Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter said.