Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which also called for a broader safety review of similar devices in thousands of other passenger jets, made its recommendations on Thursday after finding signs of disruption in the battery cells of an emergency transmitter on a 787 Dreamliner that caught fire while parked at Heathrow Airport last week.
Most passenger jets do not have fire suppressant systems near the devices, which send out a plane’s location after a crash. If a fire occurred in flight, the British investigators said, “it could pose a significant safety concern and raise challenges for the cabin crew.”
Boeing’s innovative new plane, which cuts fuel costs by 20 percent, is crucial to the company’s future. But the 787 has faced a series of setbacks since its introduction in late 2011.
Another type of battery caught fire earlier this year, prompting the F.A.A. to ground the plane for several months. On Thursday, a Japan Airlines 787 was forced to return to Boston shortly after takeoff. The airline said an indicator had suggested maintenance might be needed on the fuel pump, and the pilots, who were headed for Japan, turned back as a precaution.
The British findings stirred up an immediate debate, as various players in the aviation community sought to determine if the emergency transmitters posed enough of a safety threat to temporarily dismantle or remove them.
Although Britain is still investigating the cause of the fire at Heathrow, Boeing said it supported the recommendations as “reasonable precautionary measures.” Honeywell Aerospace, which makes the 6.6-pound transmitters on the 787, said the proposals were “prudent,” though it remained “premature to jump to conclusions” about the cause of the fire.
Thomson Airways in England said it would remove the batteries from its 787s. Other carriers that use similar transmitters, from major airlines to corporate jets, were left to decide whether it was safe to keep using them. The F.A.A. decided it needed more time to evaluate the proposals, which could conceivably lead to the removal of the batteries or the transmitters from most of the planes made by Boeing, Airbus and the smaller companies that make regional and business jets.
Federal officials said the lack of definitive evidence about the cause of the fire — and the fact that none of the transmitters had been known to cause a fire in more than 50 million flight hours — suggested they should take more time in reviewing the matter.
While some industry officials were surprised that the agency did not embrace the British recommendations more readily, Hans J. Weber, the president of Tecop International, an aviation consultancy in San Diego, said: “That’s just the way bureaucrats work. There’s always so much harrumphing, like, ‘You can’t tell us what to do. We will make up our own mind.’ ”
Still, he said, American regulators could end up issuing an advisory to plane owners to at least inspect the transmitters.
Robert Mann, an aviation consultant in Port Washington, N.Y., said the agency has to consider what it would mean for safety if planes fly without the transmitters, which have been particularly helpful in locating the wreckage of smaller planes.
The British recommendations, contained in a three-page interim report on the fire investigation, provided the strongest evidence yet that the emergency locator transmitter played a significant role in the fire on the Ethiopian Airlines 787. The findings were good news for Boeing because the fire most likely centered on a generic piece of equipment that is on many types of planes rather than one of the new systems on the Dreamliner.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/19/business/investigators-point-to-transmitter-battery-in-787-fire.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
