Timeline: Boeing's 787 Dreamliner woes

Passengers eye legal action against Boeing, Asiana over crash Tue, Jul 16 20:52 PM EDT By Jessica Dye (Reuters) - Asiana Airlines Inc and Boeing Co are facing potential legal action by passengers who were on board a flight that crashed in San Francisco on July 6, killing three and injuring more than 180, according to U.S. court filings. The Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 had more than 300 passengers and crew members on board when it crashed while landing at San Francisco International Airport. The National Transportation Safety Board is currently investigating the causes of the crash. A petition for discovery has been filed against Boeing in Chicago court, where the airplane manufacturer is headquartered. The petition begins the legal process against the maker of the Boeing 777, according to a statement from Ribbeck Law Chartered, a law firm representing the passengers. The firm announced the petition, filed Monday, in a press release on Tuesday. The passengers are seeking design, manufacturing and safety information, as well as maintenance records and other relevant evidence, in order to determine legal liability for the crash, according to their lawyers. Similar requests may be filed against other companies, including Asiana Airlines and several unnamed makers of component parts, in the coming days, the law firm said. A spokesman for Boeing declined to comment. On Monday, South Korea-based Asiana Airlines was sued in federal court in California by a Korean woman, Younga Jun Machorro, and her son, who were passengers the Asiana Airlines flight. The lawsuit alleged that the Asiana flight crew committed "an extensive litany of errors and omissions" and were improperly trained and supervised, causing the crash. They are seeking at least $5 million in damages for "extreme bodily and mental injuries and economic damages" allegedly suffered as a result of the crash, according to the lawsuit. A spokesman for Asiana Airlines declined to comment. (Reporting by Jessica Dye in New York) ============ Fri, Jul 12 19:42 PM EDT (Reuters) - Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner was set to be a game-changer for the commercial airplane industry as its use of lighter materials and new construction methods promised huge savings in fuel and maintenance costs. On Friday, a 787 Dreamliner operated by Ethiopian Airlines caught fire at Britain's Heathrow airport in a fresh blow for the U.S. planemaker. A series of delays and mishaps have plagued the aircraft since its launch in 2004: 2004 April 26 - Boeing launches the 787 Dreamliner, the first commercial jetliner to extensively use both lightweight carbon composite construction and powerful electrical systems with lithium-ion batteries. 2007 September - Boeing delays planned first flight of the 787 Dreamliner, citing out-of-sequence production work, including parts shortages, and software and systems integration arising from its new production technique. The company has outsourced Dreamliner production to about 50 suppliers from the United States and around the world. Boeing retrieves the completed components and assembles the aircraft in Everett, Washington. October 10 - Boeing delays first flight and deliveries of the 787 due to challenges in assembling the passenger jet. Deliveries are now slated to begin in late November or December 2008, versus an original target of May 2008. (http://r.reuters.com/sef69t) 2010 Nov 9 - A 787 test airplane is forced to make an emergency landing after fire breaks out in an electronics bay during flight trials. 2011 September - Japan's All Nippon Airways Co receives its first 787 Dreamliner, delayed from 2008. 2012 July - A General Electric Co engine on a 787 in North Charleston, South Carolina, breaks during a preflight test. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stops short of grounding planes for inspections. December 4 - A United Airlines 787 is forced to make an emergency landing in New Orleans after experiencing electrical problems. December 5 - U.S. regulators ask airlines flying the 787 Dreamliners to make extra inspections to ensure the planes do not experience engine failure or fire due to a manufacturing fault in the fuel line. December 13 - Qatar Airways grounds one of its three 787s after finding the same electrical problem that affected the United flight. December 17 - United Airlines and Boeing confirm that a second plane in United's fleet of Dreamliners had suffered electrical problems. 2013 January 7 - A parked 787 operated by Japan Airlines catches fire at Boston Logan International Airport after a battery in an auxiliary power system explodes. January 8 - A second Dreamliner operated by Japan Airlines leaks fuel at Logan, forcing it to cancel its takeoff and return to the gate. January 8 - United Airlines finds the same wiring problem on one of its 787 jets that caused the January 7 fire on the Japan Airlines' jet, the Wall Street Journal reports. January 9 - Japan's ANA cancels a 787 flight scheduled for a domestic trip within Japan due to brake problems. January 11 - The U.S. Department of Transportation says the 787 will undergo a comprehensive review of its critical systems. January 13 - The Japan Airlines 787 that leaked fuel in Boston on January 8 experiences another, separate fuel leak while undergoing checks in Tokyo. January 14 - Japan's transport ministry launches an investigation into the cause of the fuel leaks on Japan Airlines' Dreamliner jets. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says it is analyzing the lithium-ion battery and burned wire bundles as part of its investigation of the January 7 Japan Airlines fire. January 15 - ANA grounds all 17 of its 787 jets after another aircraft is forced to make an emergency landing. Japan Airlines suspends all 787 flights scheduled to leave Japan. January 16 - The FAA temporarily grounds all 787s after the January 15 ANA emergency landing. Europe, Japan and India join the United States in grounding the jets. January 17 - Japan Transport Safety Board says the battery onboard the ANA flight was blackened and carbonized on the inside, Kyodo News reports. January 18 - Aviation safety officials wrap up their initial investigation of the badly damaged battery and say further checks could take a week to complete. Boeing halts deliveries of the jet. January 22 - U.S. Senate says it will hold a hearing in the coming weeks to examine aviation safety oversight and the FAA's decision to allow Boeing to use highly flammable lithium-ion batteries on board the 787. January 23 - Japanese regulators join their U.S. counterparts in all but ruling out overcharged batteries as the cause of recent 787 fires. January 24 - The NTSB says systems designed to prevent battery fire aboard the Dreamliner passenger jet did not work as intended. February 4 - Boeing asks the FAA for permission to conduct test flights of the 787 Dreamliner. February 6 - Boeing is working on battery design changes that would minimize fire risks on the 787 and could have the passenger jet flying again as soon as March, the Wall Street Journal reports. February 7 - U.S. agencies clear Boeing to restart test flights of the 787 in order to get more data on potentially faulty batteries. February 8 - Boeing warns two European airlines of delays in Dreamliner deliveries. March 12 - The FAA approves Boeing plan to certify a redesigned battery system on the 787 Dreamliner and will permit two aircraft limited flights to test it. April 19 - The FAA approves the revamped battery system for the 787 Dreamliner and allows Boeing to immediately begin making repairs to the fleet of 50 planes owned by airlines around the world. (Compiled by Sagarika Jaisinghani in Bangalore; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) =============== Boeing Dreamliner catches fire at London's Heathrow airport Fri, Jul 12 19:42 PM EDT 1 of 3 By Rhys Jones LONDON (Reuters) - A Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by Ethiopian Airlines caught fire at Britain's Heathrow airport on Friday in a fresh blow for the U.S. planemaker whose new model was grounded for three months after one high-tech battery caught fire and another overheated. Boeing shares closed down 4.7 percent at $101.87, knocking $3.8 billion off the company's market capitalization after television footage showed the Dreamliner surrounded by firefighting foam at Heathrow. Heathrow briefly closed both its runways to deal with the fire which broke out while the aircraft was parked at a remote stand. There were no passengers aboard the plane. It was not clear if the fire was related to the batteries, which led to the grounding of the Dreamliner in January. Pictures from Heathrow showed an area just in front of the tail that appeared to be scorched. The Dreamliner's two batteries are in electrical compartments located low down and near the front and middle of the plane, while the visible damage to the Ethiopian plane appears to be on top of the fuselage, further toward the rear, according to video from the scene. (Graphic of key areas of the 787: http://link.reuters.com/zed69t) "A Boeing 787 Dreamliner suffered an on board internal fire," a Heathrow spokeswoman said. "The plane is now parked at a remote parking stand several hundred meters away from any passenger terminals." Former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker said the Heathrow incident was extraordinary news, coming so soon after the fleet had returned to service, but he cautioned against jumping to conclusions. "It's very early. No one knows where the fire started at this point," Rosenker told Reuters, adding it could be something as simple as a coffee pot left on in a galley. Boeing said it was aware of the fire and it had people on the ground working to understand the causes of it. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it was in contact with Boeing. BIG BET The 787 is Boeing's biggest bet on new technology in nearly 20 years. It cost an estimated $32 billion to develop and Boeing plans to use hundreds of innovations such as its carbon-fiber composite skin and electrical system to enhance other jets. Boeing never disclosed the cost of the three-month grounding, but said it absorbed most of the expense in the first quarter while still posting a 20 percent rise in profit, and its shares are up 35 percent this year, even with Friday's loss. The plane which caught fire in London was the first of the 787 fleet to resume flight after the battery-related grounding. "This is terrible for the Dreamliner, any event involving fire and that airplane is going to be a PR disaster for Boeing," Christine Negroni, an aviation writer and safety specialist based in New York, said in a telephone interview. "Because of the battery issue, the public is even more sensitive to events that happen to the Dreamliner. Even if they are normal, benign teething problems, that subtlety is going to be lost on the public," she said. Another Boeing Dreamliner operated by Thomson Airways returned to the United Kingdom due to technical issues on Friday as a precaution, TUI Travel said. Ethiopian Airlines said its aircraft had been parked at Heathrow for more than eight hours before smoke was detected. Richard Aboulafia, a senior aerospace analyst at the Teal Group in Virginia, said early evidence, including images of the jet, suggest the battery is not the issue because of the location of the fire. Another person familiar with the aircraft's configuration said the damaged area appears close to galleys and environmental control systems, but added that it was too early to link the fire to any specific equipment. BATTERY FIX Boeing's 787 Dreamliner was grounded by regulators in January after batteries overheated on two of the jets within two weeks, including a fire in a parked Japan Airlines plane in Boston. Boeing was forced to halt deliveries of the jet while it was grounded and airlines stopped ordering the plane during that period. Orders have since resumed and Boeing has logged 83 787 orders this year, bringing its current order book to 930 planes. The Dreamliner resumed flying in April, with Ethiopian Airlines being the first carrier to put it back into passenger service. The high-tech jet came under intense scrutiny and Boeing redesigned the battery system to add more layers of protection against fire. Teams of engineers were dispatched by Boeing worldwide to install the stronger battery casing and other components designed to prevent a repeat of the meltdowns that led to the first U.S. fleet grounding in 34 years. The plan approved by the FAA called for Boeing to encase the lithium-ion batteries in a steel box, install new battery chargers, and add a duct to vent gases directly outside the aircraft in the event of overheating. The NTSB has still not issued a final report on the cause of the 787 battery issues but Boeing said its redesign addressed more than 80 potential causes. The NTSB said it would send a representative to assist in the Heathrow investigation. The 787 uses a powerful electrical system to drive air conditioning and replace hydraulic functions, taking less power from the engines than traditional aircraft designs. That electrical system experienced fire during its development which also prompted changes in its electrical panels. The Dreamliner which caught fire at Heathrow on Friday was delivered to Ethiopian Airlines in November last year. It arrived at Heathrow from Addis Ababa in the early hours of Friday, according to the Flightradar monitoring web site. The plane was due to make the return journey later on Friday. Asked whether the incident could lead to the renewed grounding of Dreamliner jets, a spokesman for Britain's Civil Aviation Authority said decisions on the airworthiness of particular models of plane were made by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). An EASA spokesman said it was too early to say whether the aircraft would be grounded again. Several airlines said they were continuing to operate their 787s, including United Continental, Polish airline LOT, Japan Airlines and ANA, the world's biggest operator of the Dreamliner. Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliners are powered by General Electric GEnx engines. (Reporting by Rhys Jones, Estelle Shirbon, Mark Anderson, Michael Holden in London; Additional reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington, Alwyn Scott in Seattle and Tim Hepher in Paris; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Kate Holton; Editing by Jane Barrett, David Evans and Tim Dobbyn) ================ No evidence of link between Dreamliner fire and batteries: AAIB Sat, Jul 13 13:21 PM EDT LONDON (Reuters) - There is no evidence at this stage that a fire that broke out on a Boeing Dreamliner at London's Heathrow Airport on Friday was linked to the aircraft's batteries, Britain's Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) said on Saturday. "There has been extensive heat damage in the upper portion of the rear fuselage, a complex part of the aircraft, and the initial investigation is likely to take several days," the AAIB said in a statement. "However, it is clear that this heat damage is remote from the area in which the aircraft main and APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) batteries are located, and, at this stage, there is no evidence of a direct causal relationship." (Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; editing by Patrick Graham) Ethiopian Airlines says to continue flying Dreamliners Sat, Jul 13 06:35 AM EDT ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopian Airlines said on Saturday it would continue to operate its fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliners after one of them caught fire at London's Heathrow airport. "We have not grounded any of our aircraft," the carrier's public relations department said by email. "The incident at Heathrow happened while the plane was on the ground and had been for more than eight hours and was not related to flight safety." Asked whether the airline has determined the cause of the fire, Ethiopian Airlines said: "There is no new development. No safety issue. The incident is being investigated to determine cause of smoke." (Reporting by Aaron Maasho; Writing by James Macharia, Editing by Mark Trevelyan) =============== Qatar grounds a 787 as glitches pile up on Boeing jet Fri, Jul 26 11:49 AM EDT By Praveen Menon and Siva Govindasamy DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar Airways said on Friday it had taken one of its Boeing 787 Dreamliners out of service following what it described as a "minor" technical issue, as pressure mounted on the plane maker over possible new electrical problems with the advanced jet. The airline and Boeing Co declined to give further details but industry sources said they were treating seriously reports that the aircraft had been grounded for days after smoke was seen near an electrical panel. The 787 has suffered a spate of mishaps in recent weeks, including a spontaneous fire on an Ethiopian Airlines-owned 787 that broke out while the plane was parked at a remote stand at London's Heathrow airport for eight hours on July 12. According to Web-tracking service Flightaware, the Qatar Airways aircraft, registered as A7-BCB, has not flown since Sunday, an unusually long downtime for a long-haul jet designed to save on fuel bills. Qatar Airways confirmed an aircraft had been taken out of service, but said no flights had been canceled as a result. "This is a minor issue for us, and not an incident, so we are not commenting," an airline spokeswoman said. A spokeswoman for Boeing said, "We request that you channel all your enquiries to Qatar Airways." Two people familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified, said smoke had been reported near an electrical compartment while the jet was on the ground in Doha. A failure in a similar bay caused a fire during a test flight in 2010, and three of the jets, including one owned by Qatar Airways, had electrical problems last December. A fire-brigade supervisor in Doha said it did not have any record of an incident with an airport-related call last week. India's aviation regulator said earlier it had started an investigation after an oven in a 787 operated by Air India overheated during a domestic flight, causing smoke. There was no interruption to services. Japan's ANA Holdings Inc, which operates the world's biggest fleet of Dreamliners, also said on Friday it had found damage to the battery wiring on two 787 locator beacons, made by Honeywell International Inc. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing instructed airlines to inspect or remove the beacons, after UK investigators found two wires pinched together in the beacon inside the Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliner at Heathrow. The resulting fire caused extensive damage to the plane. PAST PROBLEMS Last December, three 787s had electrical problems that were made public. United Airlines experienced problems with electrical panels on two 787s, one of which diverted to another airport during a flight from Houston. Qatar Airways said that month that it grounded one of its 787 jets because of the same problem United had experienced. Boeing later traced the problem to faulty circuit boards in the panel. In January, regulators grounded the global fleet of 50 Dreamliners after batteries burned on two jets within two weeks. Regulators lifted the grounding in April after Boeing redesigned the battery system, which supplies backup power to the jet and is unrelated to the emergency beacon, known as an emergency locator transmitter, or ELT, that is designed to send out a signal to help rescuers locate an aircraft wreckage. Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker said in May that the airline had to forego $200 million in lost profit because of the grounding of 787 planes, but has received compensation from Boeing for the losses. At least one other airline says it is still seeking compensation. BOEING 'HIGHLY CONFIDENT' Aviation experts say it is common for the reported number of incidents to rise when an aircraft is in the spotlight, and that all new aircraft models have incidents when they first enter service. The 787 began service in the fall of 2011. Even aircraft with decades of service regularly suffer glitches that go unreported and rarely pose a direct threat to safety. However, aviation experts say U.S. and British authorities investigating the previous fires may seek to establish whether anything can be learned from a pattern of reported incidents connected in various ways to the jet's electrical systems. Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney said this week he remained "highly confident" in the future of the 787 Dreamliner program and the integrity of the company's newest airplane. The 787 incorporates a raft of changes in the way passenger jets are designed, including greater use of electrical systems that save weight compared with older hydraulics. It is the first passenger jet built mainly from lightweight carbon-composites. Boeing shares were down 0.9 percent at $105.76 late on Friday morning on the New York Stock Exchange. (Additional reporting by Siva Govindasamy, Tim Hepher, Tim Kelly, Devidutta Tripathy, Regan Doherty; editing by Christian Plumb, Alwyn Scott and Matthew Lewis) =============================== امیرالمومنین امام علی علیہ السلام کا خطبہ نمبر ۵۰ حق و باطل کی آمیزش کے نتائج فتنوں کے وقو ع کا آغاز و ہ نفسانی خواہشیں ہوتی ہیں۔ جن کی پیروی کی جاتی ہے اور وہُ نئے ایجاد کردہ احکام کہ جن میں قرآن کی مخالفت کی جاتی ہے اور جنہیں فروغ دینے کے لئے کچھ لوگ دین الٰہی کے خلاف باہم ایک دوسرے کے مدد گار ہو جاتے ہیں تو اگر باطل حق کی آمیزش سے خالی ہوتا، تو وہ ڈھونڈنے والوں سے پوشیدہ نہ رہتا اور اگر حق باطل کے شائبہ سے پاک و صاف سامنے آتا ، تو عناد رکھنے والی زبانیں بھی بند ہو جائیں ۔ لیکن ہوتا یہ ہے کہ کچھ ادھر سے لیا جاتا ہے اور کچھ ادھر سے اور دونوں کو آپس میں خلط ملط کر دیا جاتا ہے ۔ اس موقعہ پر شیطان اپنے دوستوں پر چھا جاتا ہے اور صرف وہی لوگ بچے رہتے ہیں جن کے لئے توفیق ِ الٰہی اور عنائتِ خدا وندی پہلے سے موجود ہو۔