cmn.jcs

http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/2...ry-fires.html/

Pretty much in response to the battery issue in the NH flight. Hopefully things will be back up soon; I'm sure UA is not particularly happy.

Ahuch

Not overly surprised, but hopefully not for too long!

tiramisufan

All US owned 787 or all those that land in the Us?

cblaisd

Moderator's note: before the thread goes further, please focus the discussion here on the general issues related to this action. If your thoughts involve a specific carrier that is flying the 787, please find the thread(s) in the appropriate airline forum and discuss there. Thanks!

cblaisd
Moderator, Travel News

kkjay77

Does AD applies to only US registered airframes or any that flys to/from the US?

DanTravels

Just wondering - are any of the things that have had trouble on the 787s also used in the 748i? (New technologies, new materials, etc.)

Finkface

It was expanded tonight to include other countries. From Reuters tonight:


(Reuters) - Europe, Japan and India on Thursday joined the United States in grounding Boeing Co's 787, a day after a second incident involving battery failure caused one of the Dreamliner passenger jets to make an emergency landing.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Wednesday it would temporarily ground Boeing's newest commercial airliner and insisted airlines would have to demonstrate the lithium ion batteries were safe before they could resume flying. It gave no details on when that might happen.

Himeno

Can Boeing still test fly them?

SMabille

Qatar just announced their are grounding their 787 fleet too:
http://www.iol.co.za/business/intern...9#.UPfq1V6EzL8

dranz

> Can Boeing still test fly them?

Yes.

The problem seems to be battery cooling and monitoring during [re]charging.
Li-Ion batteries have some pretty nasty failure modes (compared to prior
battery chemistries).

I am confident that Boeing will be able to fix this problem, but I don't expect
to see the fleet return to service for ~60 days, maybe longer.

thebat

Did it take all this time for the batteries to start failing? Or has this been happening all along and just tolerated? It seems odd that the failures happened at the same time.

chollie

I believe the use of the batteries is new with the 787. It was a significant change, results in fuel savings, I think, although not the bulk of the savings. The lithium-ion was an FAA concern (you may recall that pax are not allowed to check lithium-ion batteries because of fire concerns). I would have thought that the FAA (and Boeing) paid particularly close attention to the possibility of fire with the batteries (and they may have - there seem to be warning systems and I read somewhere that the compartment is particularly well-protected, presumably as extra insurance against fire spreading.

If I understand it correctly, Boeing could come up with a system to replace the batteries fairly easily ('fairly' is the operative word here - at this point, every hour is significant), but understandably they'd hope to avoid that.

It does seem odd that there were no reported issues during testing. The risks of lithium-ion are known, it was new technology - one would expect that testing would have paid particular attention to the batteries.

N830MH

Yeah, I thought they want to flying the 787-8 Dreamliner. Sadly, they won't fly for a while.

jspira

Based on this, I would say it is likely that the investigation will take weeks if not months to resolve.

NTSB Rules Out Excessive Voltage as Cause for Dreamliner Battery Fire

Article continues here>>>

tonywestsider

I don't think the 7878i uses lithium ion batteries as the 787. Later deliveries of the 747-8i will include improvements to the fuel storage location and new flight management systems. Both activities seem to be unique to the 7478i and less related to the 787. The 747-8i wings and engine design however, seems to be related to the 787's design.