In 2013, the second year of service for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a widebody jet airliner, several of the aircraft suffered from electrical system problems stemming from its lithium-ion batteries. Incidents included two electrical fires, one aboard an All Nippon Airways 787 and another on a Japan Airlines 787; the second fire was found by maintenance workers while the aircraft was parked at Boston's Logan International Airport. The United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered a review of the design and manufacture of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and grounded the entire Boeing 787 fleet, the first such grounding since that of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 in 1979.[1] The plane has had two major battery thermal runaway events in 52,000 flight hours, neither of which were contained safely; this length of time between failures was substantially less than the 10 million flight hours predicted by Boeing.[2]
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a report on December 1, 2014, and assigned blame to several groups:[3]
- GS Yuasa of Japan, for battery manufacturing methods that could introduce defects not caught by inspection
- Boeing's engineers, who failed to consider and test for worst-case battery failures
- The Federal Aviation Administration, that failed to recognize the potential hazard and did not require proper tests as part of its certification process
- ^ "Dreamliner: Boeing 787 planes grounded on safety fears". BBC News. January 17, 2013. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
- ^ "Accident: ANA B788 near Takamatsu on Jan 16th 2013, battery problem and burning smell on board". The Aviation Herald. Retrieved February 8, 2013.
- ^ Mouawad, Jad (December 1, 2014). "Report on Boeing 787 Dreamliner Batteries Assigns Some Blame for Flaws". The New York Times. Retrieved December 1, 2014.