Dreamliners return to the skies

All Nippon Airways has the world's largest fleet of the next-generation planes and the flight had ANA's chairman, Shinichiro Ito and Boeing's chief executive, Ray Conner on board. Both are anxious to put the damaging crisis behind them.

The US Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators grounded the worldwide Dreamliner fleet in mid-January after failures of the lithium-ion batteries on the jetliner caused a fire on board a parked plane in Boston and forced the emergency landing of an ANA-operated plane in Japan.

Following months of investigations, the FAA last week issued formal approval of Boeing's battery fix, and on Saturday (27 April) Ethiopian Airlines became the first carrier to resume flying the aircraft when it flew from Addis Ababa to Nairobi.

Speaking in Tokyo on Saturday (27 April), Mike Sinnett, Boeing's chief project manager for the Dreamliner said the Japanese test flight showed the faith that the US aircraft manufacturer placed in its battery fix.

"What it represents is the depth of confidence that (Boeing CEO) Ray Conner has in the series of design solutions we have brought forward," Sinnett told reporters.

ANA and domestic rival Japan Airlines (JAL) account for around half the 50 Dreamliners in service worldwide, but it could still be at least a month before they can complete all the battery fixes and get their planes in the air.

Although the exact cause of the battery failures had yet to be pinpointed, as noted by the FAA last week, Sinnett insisted that the refitted planes were safe to fly.

"Even if we missed the root cause, we have identified 80 potential causal factors and we have addressed all of them in the design," Sinnett said.

"The battery solution eliminated the potential for fire and heat getting into the airplane," he added.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge