Following a two hour 787 test flight on Monday, Boeing announced: “We have a high degree of confidence in the technical solution we are testing right now with the Federal Aviation Administration. They expect that the plane’s return to the skies “will be sooner than later.” t The test flight was staffed by six crew members: two pilots, two instrumentation engineers, a systems operator and a flight analyst. The crew were cycled the landing gear, operated all backup systems and performed electrical system checks from the flight profile. Seeing the first fire was after a…
Air Safety
Category Archives for Air Safety.
787 Testing
Further to my post last week, Boeing plans to conduct two flight tests of its revamped 787 battery system.The flights would depart from and return to Paine Field, the airport in Everett, Washington, where the 787 Dreamliner is made. One flight would collect data for its own usage. The data from the second flight would be submitted for FAA approval. If successful, then this would be a step forward to Boeing getting the aircraft approved for service within weeks. None of the airlines using 787s have begun planning to get their planes up yet. In…
787 Battery Fix?
Boeing announced this week their proposed alterations to the 787 lithium-ion batteries to prevent any major incidents in flight. Tellingly, the company has not announced the cause of he problem which suggests they do not still know it. The changes are designed not only to improve safety but reassure regulators, carriers and the public that the plane is safe. The changes include: improving the insulation between the eight cells in the battery. The batteries’ original insulation was made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) which can withstand heat of 300 degrees Fahrenheit (149 degrees Celsius). The cells…
Where can you find a 787?
Seven airlines have fifty 787s grounded at airports across the world: Tokyo Haneda, Japan: 12 Tokyo Narita, Japan: 7 Mumbai, India: 5 Houston, USA: 4 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:4 Santiago, Chile: 3 Takamatsu, Japan: 2 Bangalore, India: 1 Boston, USA: 1 Chicago,USA: 1 Doha, Qatar: 1 Frankfurt, Germany: 1 Kumamoto, Japan: 1 London Heathrow, UK: 1 Los Angeles, USA: 1 Matsuyama, Japan: 1 Warsaw, Poland: 1 In addition, Boeing has about 20 undelivered 787s.
787 situation gets more serious
The 787 grounding has now been in place for a month and it looks like Boeing faces months more. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has indicated that it will be weeks before it identifies the causes of the thermal runaway in the 787’s lithium-ion-batteries. Boeing conducted a second test flight of the 787 from Seattle’s Boeing field across Washington state last Monday for an hour and 29 minutes. The flight was uneventful. Boeing advised that the flight data is being analysed but did not release any details. Boeing is basically guaranteed not to be able to…
787 Update- one flies, would you fly it?
Boeing have suggested some battery design changes that it believes will reduce the fire risk by increasing the separation between cells in the lithium-ion batteries to reduce heat or fire spreading within the batteries. This fix would allow the 50 grounded jets to fly again while the company looks for a longer term fix. Boeing’s certification tests put the chances of smoke from a 787 battery at one in every 10 million flight hours. Deborah Hersman, head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said: “The 787 fleet has accumulated less than 100,000 flight hours yet there…
787 still grounded
It has now been over a week since the 787 flew. For the eight carriers that have the 787 in service, another week of no revenue from the plane. The National Transportation Safety Board investigators have not yet found the reason for the January 7 fire at Boston airport. U.S. safety investigators ruled out last Sunday that the cause came from was excess voltage and expanded their investigation to look at the battery’s charger and the jet’s auxiliary power unit. One of the most chilling learnings for me was that Securaplane, the company that makes the charger suffered millions…
The 787 Battery Fire: Step by step
On January 7, 2013 a JAL Boeing 787 landed at Boston Logan airport. It had flown as JAL008 from Tokyo Narita. The 787 had logged only 22 pressurisation cycles (basically the number of times it had been in the air) and 169 flight hours. It parked at the gate at 1006am local time. All 183 passengers and 11 crew left the plane. At 1032am the Cleaning and maintenance crew noticed smoke in cabin. Three minutes later, a mechanic noted flames coming from APU battery in the aft (rear) electronics bay. The Airport Rescue & Fire Fighting were notified at 1037am and the fire…
All 787s grounded-airline by airline
After a series of highly publicised problems including an ANA emergency landing on Wednesday 16 January, all 50 of the 787s across the world have been grounded. On Wednesday 16th January, 2013, US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the grounding of all US-registered 787s and recommended other jurisdictions do the same: As a result of an in-flight, Boeing 787 battery incident earlier today in Japan, the FAA will issue an emergency airworthiness directive (AD) to address a potential battery fire risk in the 787 and require operators to temporarily cease operations. Before further flight, operators of U.S.-registered, Boeing 787 aircraft must demonstrate to…
787 Safety “Concerns”
Boeing has now delivered 50 of their 787s over the last year. There have been some recent safety incidents which have got high profile attention: the most worrying was a fire that ignited last Monday in the battery pack of an auxiliary power unit of an empty Japan Airlines 787 30 minutes after it had landed at Logan International Airport in Boston. The fire took 40 minutes to contain. Glad it was on the ground. Last December, a United Airlines 787 flying from Houston to Newark made an emergency landing in New Orleans after the pilots got…
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