Airlines
scrambled on Thursday to rearrange flights as Europe, Japan and
India joined the United States in grounding Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner
passenger jets while battery-related problems are investigated.
 |
| NTSB photo of the burned auxiliary power unit battery from a JAL Boeing 787 that caught fire on Jan. 7 at Boston Photo from ASN . |
The lightweight,
mainly carbon-composite plane has been plagued by recent mishaps - including an
emergency landing of an All Nippon Airways domestic flight on Wednesday after
warning lights indicated a battery problem - raising concerns over its use of
lithium-ion batteries.
The U.S. Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday temporarily grounded Boeing's newest
commercial airliner, saying carriers would have to demonstrate the batteries
were safe before the planes could resume flying. It gave no details on when
that might happen. Other regulators followed suit on Thursday.
It is the first such
action against a U.S.-made passenger plane since the McDonnell Douglas DC-10
had its airworthiness certificate suspended following a deadly crash in Chicago
in 1979, analysts said.
Boeing has sold
around 850 of the new planes, with 50 delivered to date. Around half of those
have been in operation in Japan, but airlines in India, South America, Poland,
Qatar and Ethiopia, as well as United Airlines in the United States, are also
flying the aircraft, which has a list price of $207 million.
With most of that
Dreamliner fleet now effectively out of action as engineers and regulators make
urgent checks - primarily to the plane's batteries and complex electronics
systems - airlines are wrestling with gaps in their scheduling.
Read more >>>>reuters
0 Comments