Officials at All Nippon Airways, the jets’ biggest operator, said in an interview on Tuesday that it replaced 10 of the batteries in the months before fire in one plane and smoke in another led regulators around the world to ground the jets.
The airline said it told Boeing of the replacements as they occurred but was not required to report them to safety regulators because they were not considered a safety issue and no flights were canceled or delayed.
National Transportation Safety Board officials said Tuesday that their inquiry would include the replacements.
The airline also, for the first time, explained the extent of the previous problems, which underscore the volatile nature of the batteries and add to concerns over whether Boeing and other plane manufacturers will be able to use the batteries safely.
In five of the 10 replacements, All Nippon said that the main battery had showed an unexpectedly low charge. An unexpected drop in a 787’s main battery also occurred on the All Nippon flight that had to make an emergency landing in Japan on Jan. 16.
The airline also revealed that in three instances, the main battery failed to operate normally and had to be replaced along with the charger. In other cases, one battery showed an error reading and another, used to start the auxiliary power unit, failed. All the events occurred from May to December of last year. The main battery on the plane that made the emergency landing was returned to its maker, GS Yuasa, and that 10 other batteries involved in mishaps were sent to the airline’s maintenance department.
Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators had only recently heard that there had been “numerous issues with the use of these batteries” on 787s. She said the board had asked Boeing, All Nippon and other airlines for information about the problems.
“That will absolutely be part of the investigation,” she said.
Boeing, based in Chicago, has said repeatedly that any problems with the batteries can be contained without threatening the planes and their passengers.
But in response to All Nippon’s disclosures, Boeing officials said the airline’s replacement of the batteries also suggested that safeguards were activated to prevent overheating and keep the drained batteries from being recharged.
Boeing officials also acknowledged that the new batteries were not lasting as long as intended. But All Nippon said that the batteries it replaced had not expired.
A GS Yuasa official, Tsutomu Nishijima, said battery exchanges were part of the normal operations of a plane but would not comment further.
The Federal Aviation Administration decided in 2007 to allow Boeing to use the lithium-ion batteries instead of older, more stable types as long as it took safety measures to prevent or contain a fire. But once Boeing put in those safeguards, it did not revisit its basic design even as more evidence surfaced of the risks involved, regulators said.
In a little-noticed test in 2010, the F.A.A. found that the kind of lithium-ion chemistry that Boeing planned to use — lithium cobalt — was the most flammable of several possible types. The test found that batteries of that type provided the most power, but could also overheat more quickly.
In 2011, a lithium-ion battery on a Cessna business jet started smoking while it was being charged, prompting Cessna to switch to traditional nickel-cadmium batteries.
The safety board said Tuesday that it had still not determined what caused a fire on Jan. 7 on a Japan Airlines 787 that was parked at Logan Airport in Boston. The fire occurred nine days before an All Nippon jet made its emergency landing after pilots smelled smoke in the cockpit.
Federal regulators said it was also possible that flaws in the manufacturing process could have gone undetected and caused the recent incidents.
The batteries’ maker X-rays each battery before shipping to look for possible defects.
Matthew L. Wald contributed reporting.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/30/business/boeing-aware-of-battery-ills-before-the-fires.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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