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Does Tesla’s Battery Fire Tempt Boeing to Schadenfreude?

October 3, 2013

The joke about the mixed emotions when ones’ mother-in-law drives off a cliff in your brand-new-car surely must describe how Boeing feels today watching Tesla defend the lithium ion batteries powering its cars.  Tuesday (while I was writing a nice little feature  for the Times about a Tesla S as wedding coach) a similar sedan caught fire in Washington state, a roaring blaze captured on video by a passing motorist who spontaneously opined “Oh, s–t dude, that’s a brand new car!” He then adds, “Wow, I can feel the heat in here.” That may be the more significant statement which I will get to in… Read More…


LOT Dreamliners Spend the Weekend Grounded

September 23, 2013

The LOT Polish Dreamliner SP-LRB before it was grounded Take a good look at this Boeing 787 in flight, then remember, that’s not a sure thing with the troubled Dreamliner. In the most recent interruption, the six-month-old LOT Polish 787 tail number SP-LRB seen left and another plane, tail number SP-LRC were grounded for several days when mechanics discovered missing fuel filters on the planes’ Rolls Royce engines.  A source tells me during testing at Boeing in Everett, Washington, mechanics at the plane maker removed the engine’s fuel filters and failed to re install them. The planes were then delivered to the airline and began flying in passenger… Read More…


Will Passengers Weigh in on the Dreamliner?

May 13, 2013

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED AND REVISED  Does the decision of the Federal Aviation Administration to allow the Dreamliner to fly again need judicial review? An airline passenger rights organization thinks so. In a petition to the U.S. Department of Transportation and the FAA, FlyersRights.org is asking that the Boeing 787 be restricted to routes that are no farther than 2 hours from the nearest diversion airport. Paul Hudson, the president of FlyersRights.org and the chief of the Airline Consumer Action Project says the issue is “urgent” since airlines around the globe are beginning to put the Dreamliners back into service as Boeing’s battery-in-a-box safety enhancements are… Read More…


Is Ethiopian’s First Dreamliner Flight a Delusion?

April 29, 2013

Ethiopian’s 787 ET-AOP on April 27th Boeing photo THIS STORY HAS BEEN CORRECTED AND UPDATED HERE. Ethiopian Airlines loaded up Flight 801 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on Saturday and literally lifted the Dreamliner from its three month grounding, the first Boeing 787 customer to resume service on the troubled jet or so the stories say. But wait, announcing a resumption of service may be a tad premature. A more careful reading of the Ethiopian and Boeing press releases seems to indicate that despite the fuss, the flight was a one-off. Tewolde Gebremariam in Addis Ababa Sure there were passengers on board the plane, including Tewolde… Read More…


787 Battery Box Has Boeing Confined

March 14, 2013

Battery from ANA Dreamliner. Photo courtesy JTSB The materials engineers at Boeing are probably already calculating the size and shape of the new box that will confine the Dreamliner’s lithium ion batteries. But it will take a magician to get Boeing out of the box it’s presently in. It has an airplane tied up to its wingnuts with a battery technology that may have to go and every way it turns, it finds another corner it cannot navigate. Lithium ion, you recall, was selected because of Boeing’s desire to get a lighter, more fuel efficient airplane. By using two sixtyish pound batteries to provide some of the airplane’s voracious… Read More…


B787 Battery Can’t Meet 1 In a Billion Standard Experts Say

March 13, 2013

The Federal Aviation Administration announced this afternoon that it has approved Boeing‘s modified plan to fly the Dreamliner again with its lithium ion batteries on board, the “first step in the process to evaluate the 787’s return to flight.”  The modifications Boeing intends to test  include rearranging the internal battery components, improving the insulation of the cells and … here’s the biggie, drum roll please, using a new housing to contain the results of any battery gone haywire and vent overboard the resulting smoke or fumes  Notably absent from the FAA and Boeing statements is the F-Word, that being fire.  Despite the fact that the battery gone… Read More…


Ahhh, Boeing, About Those Hours of Battery Testing

March 8, 2013

A curious thing emerges from the five hundred plus page report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, as I reported here for APEX Editors Blog.  Despite all its talk about thoroughly, exhaustively, comprehensively testing the lithium ion batteries used on the Dreamliner, Boeing and its subcontractors failed repeatedly to gauge how separate components of the battery system would work together. Securaplane, producers of the charger for the 787 battery, tested its product. Thales, which was contracted by Boeing to design and create the battery system, tested some components. But when it came time to put it all together and run tests on the whole shebang, Thales failed to examine what was… Read More…


Dreamliner in the Rear View Mirror for Some United Pilots

February 22, 2013

Back in 1980, singer Mac Davis had a hit with his song Texas in My Rear View Mirror and I’m guessing down at the Continental United base in Houston a few pilots are feelin’ that way about their erstwhile careers flying the Boeing 787. N26902 in New Orleans photo courtesy Marc A Wessels Because, as I reported for Mary Kirby‘s excellent APEX Editors Blog earlier this week, a good number of those pilots who were headed to the 787 cockpit have been diverted back to their old airplanes. And FAA grounding of the Dreamliner notwithstanding, United has canceled all 787 flights until June. The United PR… Read More…


ANA Dreamliner An Odd Exception to Boeing Design

February 21, 2013

Japanese investigators are making a remarkable claim in the most recent update into the burning battery on an All Nippon Airways Dreamliner; the ship, JA804A was one of only three Boeing 787s to retain a wiring design the planemaker later revised.  In the original design, both of the Dreamliner’s lithium ion batteries were connected to each other, according to a review of the report, written in Japanese and released by the Japanese Transport Safety Bureau on Wednesday.  Since I do not read Japanese, I rely on the rough translation of my man in Tokyo, Takeo Aizawa, and the very good illustrations and photographs in the… Read More…


Boeing’s Bad Battery News A Re-Occurring Nightmare

February 20, 2013

UPDATED February 20th The Japan Transportation Safety Board  has rapid-fire found and diagnosed a surprise second battery problem on the All Nippon Airways Dreamliner that made an emergency landing on January 16th.  (The report in Japanese along with diagrams and photos can be found here.) Yesterday it said two out of the 8 cells in the aft battery had “deformations or slight swelling of the stainless cases” based on scan images examined by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.  The NTSB examines the JAL battery Remember it was smoke in the forward battery in the  E&E bay that prompted pilots to divert to Takamatsu. Associated Press is reporting that improper wiring of the battery… Read More…


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