The decision follows incidents involving a plane parked in Boston and one in Japan that was forced to make an emergency landing on Wednesday morning after an alarm warning of smoke in the cockpit. The problems prompted All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines to voluntarily ground their 787s.
The F.A.A.’s emergency directive, issued Wednesday night, initially applies to United Airlines, the only American carrier using the new plane so far, with six 787s.
Other regulators around the globe followed suit on Thursday. In Japan the transport ministry issued a formal order to ground all 787s indefinitely, until concerns over the aircraft’s battery systems are resolved. In India, the aviation regulator grounded all six of the 787s operated by the state-owned carrier Air India.
European safety regulators also will ground Dreamliners.
Boeing, based in Chicago, has a lot riding on the 787, and its stock dropped nearly 3.4 percent on Wednesday to $74.34. The company has outlined ambitious plans to double its production rate to 10 planes a month by the end of 2013. It is also starting to build a stretch version and considering an even larger one after that.
“We are confident the 787 is safe and we stand behind its overall integrity,” Jim McNerney, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a statement.
The grounding — an unusual action for a new plane — focuses on one of the more risky design choices made by Boeing, namely to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries aboard its airplanes for the first time.
Until now, much of the attention on the 787 was focused on its lighter composite materials and more efficient engines, meant to usher in a new era of more fuel-efficient travel, particularly over long distances. The batteries are part of an electrical system that replaces many mechanical and hydraulic ones common in previous jets.
The 787’s problems could jeopardize one of its major features, its ability to fly long distances at a cheaper cost. The plane is certified to fly 180 minutes from an airport. The government is unlikely to extend that to 330 minutes, as Boeing has promised, until all problems with the plane have been resolved.
For Boeing, “it’s crucial to get it right,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. “They’ve got a brief and closing window in which they can convince the public and their flying customers that this is not a problem child.”
The 787 uses two identical lithium-ion batteries, each about one-and-a-half to twice the size of a car battery. One battery, in the rear electrical equipment bay near the wings, is used to start the auxiliary power unit, a small engine in the tail that is used most often to provide power for the plane while it is on the ground. The other battery, called the main battery, starts the pilot’s computer displays and serves as a backup for flight systems.
The maker of the 787’s batteries, Japan’s GS Yuasa, has declined to comment on the problems so far.
Boeing has defended the novel use of the batteries and said it had put in place a series of systems meant to prevent overcharging and overheating.
In a conference call last week with reporters, Boeing’s chief engineer for the 787, Mike Sinnett, said that the company had long been aware of possible problems with lithium-ion batteries, but it had built numerousredundant features to keep any problems with the batteries from threatening the plane in flight. He said the batteries had not had any problems in 1.3 million hours of flight, and that Boeing was trying to understand what had caused the problems.
Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo, Sruthi Gottipati from New Delhi and Bettina Wassener from Hong Kong.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 16, 2013
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article published online, and an appended correction, misstated the number of Boeing 787s already delivered worldwide. It is 50, not 49.
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