The United States, Japan, India, and European
countries have decided to indefinitely discontinue the use of the Boeing
Dreamliner 787 after multiple incidents, including fires and battery failures,
have occurred over the last week.
A maintenance worker discovered an electrical fire aboard an empty Japan Airlines aircraft at Boston’s Logan International Airport
on January 7th, resulting in one injured firefighter. At the same
airport on the following day, a different Dreamliner 787 was unable to
disembark on its flight to Tokyo after another pilot reported fuel “spewing”
out of the left wing of the plane.
Various reports, such as cracked engines and a
defective cockpit window, escalated into a battery failure on January 16th when an All Nippon Airlines Boeing 787 made an emergency landing during a domestic flight in Japan (you might have a little bit of trouble reading this link). After a battery alarm signaled smoke and a
burning odor within the aircraft, the plane made an emergency landing and all
129 passengers evacuated via emergency slides.
Although extensive investigation has yet to be made,
it seems as though the batteries of the Dreamliner 787 seems to be the main cause of the problems. The main batteries of the Dreamliners involved in the
electrical fire and the emergency landing have been manufactured by the same Japanese
company, GS Yuasa Corporation. Others have pointed to the long manufacturing
delays and cost overruns that Boeing ran into during their development of the
Dreamliner 787—perhaps in hastiness to get it out onto the market, the company
neglected to look over potential flaws that are beginning to show up now.
The safety concerns over this new Boeing model,
which started commercial use in 2011, has had economic costs—the Yuasa
Corporation’s shares have dropped by a substantial 18 percent, while the Boeing shares have dropped 2 percent; if this problem continues, both shares are sure to continue
dropping.
The Boeing chief engineer is “100% convinced the
airplane is safe to fly;” however, as former pilot and vice president of he Flight Safety Foundation Kevin Hiatt so eloquently stated, “This is an
extremely serious situation.”
3 comments:
Yikes! I'm glad that the different countries are waiting to fly until the problem with the lithium battery has been investigated. It looks like the this new Boeing model's safety issues were put aside so that Boeing could compete with the rival plane maker Airbus (according to this blog post ). The writer also compares this situation to the recall of Toyota's specific cars, which hurt consumer's confidence. I hope that Boeing can figure out this problem quickly, not only for their own stock prices, but also for the many different airlines who have grounded their planes and especially their passengers!
For such a new, modern, efficient and technologically advanced aircraft as it is, it is not good news to be hearing something like this happen. After all of the setbacks, deadlines missed and money spent on such a breakthrough aircraft it is causing a lot of worry for Boeing. As in previous new products like the Chevy Volt, batteries seem to be the problem here. With the 787 being almost solely flown on computers, a battery problem can turn out to be a costly problem. It seems like it is a small mistake that nobody could have foreseen due to the amount of extensive testing each aircraft has to go through. Maybe the sole blame will be put on the battery manufacturer or at least Boeing will try to do that.
The battery problems on Boeing's gleaming new and mostly composite aircraft is quite reminiscent of the months after the Airbus A380 launch. With wing rib fractures and exploding engines resulting in grounding and expensive and premature inspections, the situation is similar in how it was handled. With aircraft nowadays becoming larger, lighter and more efficient, such advances in technology are bound to have one or two hiccups that sneak by unnoticed during testing. All I hope is that the battery problem will be resolved soon and that we won't be seeing anymore of these
in the near future.
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