Barnett's description of the safety issues is terrifying. For example, the process of tightening the titanium nuts on the floorboard-bolts caused 3"-long, razor sharp titanium slivers to cascade into the compartment where all the sensitive avionics wiring ran.

“For the titanium slivers, [the FAA] wrote a DAI – a designated airworthiness inspection requirement. That DAI is for Boeing only. They told Boeing – you are not allowed to deliver any more planes with these metal slivers. And during that process, Boeing came back and determined that the slivers were not a safety of flight issue, so they did not notify the customers of the planes that had already been delivered that those slivers were on the plane. And at the time, I think we were up around 800 airplanes that had been delivered. Every 787 out there has these slivers out there.”

This is all pretty bad-sounding. The article also says:

Some of these shards have already caused fires in 787s.

Though I can find lots of stuff about battery fires [1], nothing seems to mention anything about titanium slivers or shards. It seems the direct cause of these fires remains unknown, so maybe there's a connection here, I just can't find anything about it. Anyone have more insight to this?

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=boeing+787+battery