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Boeing Profit Is Up 13%, Exceeding Expectations, and Its Forecast Rises

July 24, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The company, based in Chicago, also raised its forecast for all of 2013. It projected earnings of $5.10 to $5.30 a share for the year, an increase from an earlier estimate of $5 to $5.20 a share. It now expects revenue of $83 billion to $86 billion, compared with its earlier forecast for $82 billion to $85 billion.

The gains reflected the strong recovery in commercial aircraft sales since the recession. Like other major military contractors, Boeing has increased profit by cutting costs and expanding foreign arms sales.

The results showed that Boeing had not been hampered much by recent problems with its new 787 Dreamliners. The first 50 jets were grounded from mid-January to late April after two episodes of fire or smoke involving its new lithium-ion batteries. British investigators said last week that another fire, on a 787 parked at London’s Heathrow Airport on July 12, appeared to have been caused by a pinched wire on an emergency locator transmitter, a common device that had nothing to do with the novel systems on the planes.

Boeing delivered 16 additional 787s in the second quarter. The 787, which entered service in late 2011, is made substantially of lightweight carbon composites and has efficient engines that help slash fuel costs by 20 percent. Boeing said it expected to deliver at least 60 Dreamliners this year.

The company also said on Wednesday that it had finished retrofitting the 787s with a new battery system that virtually eliminated the risk of a fire. W. James McNerney Jr., Boeing’s chief executive, said the company had completed deals to compensate airlines for some of the revenue they lost while the planes were grounded. He would not say how much that cost was, other than saying that it did not have a material impact on Boeing’s earnings.

Mr. McNerney said that both Boeing and Ethiopian Airlines, which owns the 787 that caught fire at Heathrow Airport, had insurance to cover such problems.

The 787 had weighed heavily on Boeing’s results in recent years as production delays increased the cost of the planes and forestalled revenue. The increase in deliveries has generated more cash for the company, as have growing sales of 737s and 777s, its most profitable jets.

Boeing has gradually raised production rates for those older models, and Mr. McNerney said on Wednesday that it could eventually produce more than 42 of the single-aisle 737s each month. It now builds 38 a month and plans to expand to 42 a month next year.

Despite cuts in military budgets in Washington and Europe, Boeing said its military business had increased its earnings by 4 percent in the second quarter even though its revenue fell by 4 percent. Its commercial aircraft and military businesses have both been buoyed by sales to Middle Eastern and Asian customers.

Over all, Boeing’s revenue rose 9 percent, to $21.82 billion from $20 billion, in the second quarter. Its net earnings jumped to $1.09 billion, or $1.41 a share, from $967 million, or $1.27 a share, a year earlier.

Excluding pension costs and other ancillary items, Boeing said its core operating earnings also rose by 13 percent, to $2.03 billion, or $1.67 a share, from $1.79 billion, or $1.48 a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Analysts had expected core earnings of $1.58 a share, according to Thomson Reuters. Boeing projected that its core earnings for all of 2013 would total $6.20 a share to $6.40 a share.

Also on Wednesday, safety investigators in the United Arab Emirates concluded “with reasonable certainty” that a fire that started in cargo containing lithium batteries caused the crash of a Boeing 747-400 cargo plane in the desert near Dubai three years ago. The crash killed both of the United Parcel Service pilots who were flying the plane. That and other fires in aircraft cargo holds have led to tighter rules on transporting lithium batteries.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/business/boeing-exceeds-expectations-and-raises-its-forecast.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Novelties: The Artificial Heart Is Getting a Bovine Boost

July 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Now Carmat, a company based in Paris, has designed an artificial heart fashioned in part from cow tissue. The device, soon to be tested in patients with heart failure, is regulated by sensors, software and microelectronics. And its power will come from two external, wearable lithium-ion batteries.

Fifteen years in development, the heart has been approved for clinical trials at cardiac surgery centers in Belgium, Poland, Saudi Arabia and Slovenia, where staff members are receiving training and patients are being screened, said Dr. Piet Jansen, medical director at Carmat.

In France, where the device is not yet cleared for human implantation, regulators have requested more animal tests, Dr. Jansen said; those tests are continuing.

Artificial hearts aren’t new, of course, but the Carmat heart is unusual in its design, said Dr. Joseph Rogers, an associate professor at Duke University and medical director of its cardiac transplant and mechanical circulatory support program. Surfaces in the new heart that touch human blood are made from cow tissue instead of artificial materials like plastic that can cause problems like clotting.

“The way they’ve incorporated biological surfaces for any place that contacts blood is a really nice advantage,” Dr. Rogers said. “If they have this design right, this could be a game changer.” He added that it could lessen the need for anticoagulation medicines. (Dr. Rogers has no financial connections to Carmat.)

This is the first artificial heart to use cow-derived materials — specifically, tissue from the pericardial sac that surrounds the heart. Biological tissue has been used in earlier mechanical blood pumps only in valves, Dr. Rogers said.

Thousands of people in the United States need a replacement heart, said Dr. Lynne Warner Stevenson, a professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the cardiomyopathy and heart-failure program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “It’s estimated that if we had enough donor hearts to go around, 100,000 to 150,000 people in the United States with heart failure would benefit,” she said. “Transplants work best, but we have only 2,000 or so adult hearts” that are available each year, she said. “It’s a huge problem.”

There are long-established options for patients while they await transplants, Dr. Stevenson said, including installing an artificial heart made by SynCardia until a donor heart is available.

When the natural heart is partly damaged or diseased, patients might keep it and have a mechanical aid implanted to bolster blood flow. Such pumps — especially those that aid the left side of the heart — are in wide use both as a bridge to a transplant and for lifetime therapy.

A totally artificial heart for extended use would be of great value, but it’s far too early to know if the Carmat heart, as yet untried in humans, will be that device. “The whole history of mechanical devices is that people thought they had devices where blood wouldn’t clot. But they didn’t,” Dr. Stevenson said.

Dr. Jansen said that the cost of the Carmat heart would be about $200,000 and that he did not expect it to be brought to market in Europe before the end of 2014. Once the company gains momentum with its European clinical studies, he said, it plans to start working through the regulatory process in the United States.

The Carmat heart has two chambers, each divided by a membrane. That membrane has cow tissue on one side — the side that is in contact with blood — and polyurethane on the other side, which touches the miniaturized pumping system of motors and hydraulic fluids that changes the membrane’s shape. (The motion of the membrane pushes the blood out to the body.) The embedded electronics and software adjust the rate of blood flow. Patients can wear the batteries under the arm in a holster, or in a belt, among other options.

Cow tissue is also used for the heart’s artificial valves, which were created by Dr. Alain Carpentier, a cardiac surgeon and a pioneer of heart valve repair who is also a co-founder of Carmat and its scientific director. Such valves have been used in heart-valve replacement surgery for decades. The cow tissue is chemically treated so that it is sterile and biologically inert.

The heart’s design and development relied heavily on aerospace testing strategies by EADS, the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, one of Carmat’s backers, Dr. Jansen said. Even so, duplicating the durability of a human heart will not be easy, said Dr. Robert Kormos, director of the artificial heart program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and co-director of its heart transplant program.

“We can test these pumps on the bench in the laboratory, and in animals, but there is no true long-term data until you implant them in people for trials,” he said.

DR. JANSEN said that one design requirement for the heart was that it last five years. The company has been doing bench tests to see whether the new heart will stand up to that level of wear and tear. “Whether it lasts five years in the patient we will have to prove clinically,” he said.

Dr. Stevenson of Harvard is optimistic about the new device.

“Innovation is what we need,” she said. “This new device is exciting. I applaud the pioneers who developed it, and the patients and families who will go down this path for the first time.”

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/business/the-artificial-heart-is-getting-a-bovine-boost.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Early Inquiry Shows No Link to Battery in 787 Fire

July 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The British Air Accidents Investigation Branch said in a statement that the fire resulted in smoke throughout the plane and extensive heat damage in the upper part of the rear fuselage. But it said that the damage was not near either of the plane’s lithium-ion batteries. And “at this stage, there is no evidence of a direct causal relationship” between the batteries and the fire, the statement said.

The investigation branch also said its initial inquiry would most likely take several days. It did not offer any other comment on possible causes.

The innovative planes had been grounded worldwide from January to April after two episodes involving fire or smoke coming from the new and more volatile types of batteries. But the planes began flying again in late April after regulators approved a series of fixes, including adding insulation between the battery cells and encasing the batteries inside a steel box.

The initial finding that there was no link to the batteries in the fire on the Ethiopian Airlines plane parked at Heathrow Airport on Friday would be a relief to Boeing, its investors and the 12 airlines that have bought the plane. But the outcome of the investigation could still be significant, depending on whether the investigators find problems with other systems.

Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement earlier on Saturday that it was continuing to fly its other 787s because the fire at Heathrow occurred after the jet had been on the ground for eight hours and “was not related to flight safety.” The airline did not comment on the possible cause of the fire.

Separately, The Financial Times quoted an Ethiopian manager in Britain as saying that maintenance workers had discovered a problem with the plane’s air-conditioning system during a routine inspection and had seen sparks but no flames. The report did not say when the inspection occurred, and aviation-safety officials in the United States were not sure what to make of it.

In addition to the British investigators leading the inquiry, a team from Boeing was on site along with representatives from the airline and from two American government agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

The fire caused no injuries or significant damage but did disrupt travel in Britain and elsewhere. Investors reacted nervously, sending Boeing’s shares down 4.7 percent on Friday.

Smoke came from the plane, named the Queen of Sheba, eight hours after it had been parked in a remote space at Heathrow and about four and a half hours before it was scheduled to depart for Ethiopia. No passengers were on the plane, which was connected to an external ground power source, according to people briefed on the episode.

It was also not clear if any maintenance was under way or how long the fire had been burning, though it was intense enough to burn through its carbon-composite skin on the top of the fuselage near the tail.

That area was not next to either of the plane’s new lithium-ion batteries, which caught fire or emitted smoke in the two earlier cases that led to the grounding of the first 50 787s. Unless they were charging, aviation experts said, the batteries would not have been in use if the plane were connected to ground power.

Safety investigators and Boeing did not comment on the possible cause of the fire.

Other experts said that some of the plane’s wiring, and the oxygen systems for passengers, would have passed through the damaged area, which was above the rear galley. It was also possible the fire migrated from another part of the plane, they said.

Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation consultant at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va., said the possibilities ranged from “something pretty benign,” like a lighted cigarette or a coffee machine left on, to a serious flaw in the plane’s new electrical system, which includes other innovative components besides the batteries. Or, he said, it could be something “not as easy or as terrible,” like a component that was installed incorrectly.

The Heathrow fire was not the only problem aboard a 787 on Friday. Thomson Airways, a charter airline, said that one of its Dreamliner planes traveling from Manchester Airport in England to Orlando-Sanford International Airport in Florida had to turn back “as a precautionary measure.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/business/fire-on-boeing-787-dreamliner-at-heathrow-in-london.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Investigation Continues Into Fire on Boeing 787

July 13, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch, which is responsible for investigating civil aviation incidents, said the airliner, operated by Ethiopian Airlines, had been moved to a secure hangar and that a full investigation was under way.

In addition to the British investigators leading the inquiry, a team from Boeing was on site along with representatives from the airline and from two American government agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.

The fire, which broke out Friday, caused no injuries or significant damage but did disrupt travel in Britain and elsewhere. Heathrow airport said that around 40 flights had been canceled on Saturday as it cleared its backlog of delays after planes were left in the wrong location.

But the repercussions for Boeing could be more significant. Investors, mindful that hazards with the jet’s batteries had led to the grounding of the entire fleet from January to April, reacted nervously, sending Boeing’s shares down 4.7 percent on Friday.

Smoke came from the plane, named the Queen of Sheba, eight hours after it had been parked in a remote space at Heathrow and about four and a half hours before it was scheduled to depart for Ethiopia. No passengers were on the plane, which was connected to an external ground power source, according to people briefed on the incident.

It was also not clear if any maintenance was under way or how long the fire had been burning, though it was intense enough to burn through its carbon-composite skin on the top of the fuselage near the tail.

That area was not next to either of the plane’s new lithium-ion batteries, which caught fire or emitted smoke in two earlier incidents that led to the grounding of the first 50 787s. Unless they were charging, aviation experts said, the batteries would not have been in use if the plane were connected to ground power.

A team of British safety investigators began examining the plane shortly after the fire was put out. But no one involved — the investigators, Boeing, the airline or the airport — commented on the possible cause of the fire.

Other experts said that some of the plane’s wiring, and the oxygen systems for passengers, would have passed through the damaged area, which was above the rear galley. It was also possible the fire migrated from another part of the plane, they said.

Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation consultant at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va., said the possibilities ranged from “something pretty benign,” like a lit cigarette or a coffee machine left on, to a serious flaw in the plane’s new electrical system, which includes other innovative components besides the batteries. Or, he said, it could be something “not as easy or as terrible,” like a component that was installed incorrectly.

The Heathrow incident was not the only problem aboard a 787 on Friday. Thomson Airways, a charter airline, said that one of its Dreamliner planes traveling from Manchester Airport in England to Orlando-Sanford International Airport in Florida had to turn back “as a precautionary measure.”

The fire on the Ethiopian 787 forced Heathrow Airport to temporarily suspend arrivals and departures while fire crews responded to the incident at 4:36 p.m. local time. Once the fire was extinguished around 6 p.m., the runways reopened.

Friday’s incidents took place about two months after the 787 Dreamliners returned to the skies after being grounded over the battery problems. One of the new lithium-ion batteries caught fire on a 787 parked at a Boston airport on Jan. 7, and another began smoking in midflight nine days later, forcing a 787 to make an emergency landing in Japan.

Stephen Castle reported from London, and Christopher Drew from New York. Jad Mouawad contributed from New York.

 

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/business/fire-on-boeing-787-dreamliner-at-heathrow-in-london.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Aircraft Makers Shy Away From Risky Bets in Building New Planes

May 6, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Boeing’s announcement last week that it had begun pitching airlines on an enhanced version of its 777 jet, rather than a whole new plane, underscores how the aerospace industry is pulling back from the risky bets that have led to costly, and humbling, delays on other planes, like Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

Instead of following the Dreamliner template, in which it sought to create a revolutionary plane brimming with new technology, Boeing is now seeking a safer, more incremental path. It plans to add the most crucial new technologies, like lightweight plastic composite wings and more fuel-efficient engines, to the 777, while avoiding the time and expense of designing a replacement from scratch.

Airbus, too, has expressed concern about the “go for broke” mentality that prompted Boeing to fill the Dreamliner with novel features, including a greater use of composites and a more advanced electrical system to increase the fuel savings.

After smoke and fire erupted from the new lithium-ion batteries on two 787s in January, forcing the grounding of the entire fleet, Airbus dropped its plans to use the volatile batteries on its new A350 jets and went back to more tried-and-true ones.

“Risk, risk, risk,” Tom Enders, the chief of Airbus’s parent company, European Aeronautic Defense and Space, said of Boeing’s approach to the Dreamliner.

Mr. Enders said Airbus had made similar mistakes in designing some of the components on its latest planes. “It’s pushing the technology envelope and not always taking enough care that the technologies were mature when we put them on an aircraft,” he said. “And that doesn’t benefit the customer, obviously.”

Aviation analysts said Boeing had to make a technological leap with the Dreamliner over the last decade to again surpass Airbus in total plane sales, just as it now has to upgrade the 777, its long-range workhorse, to counter a new challenge from the A350.

But while Boeing needed to take radical steps, like molding the entire fuselage of the Dreamliner out of the plastic composites to cut fuel costs by 20 percent, it can achieve similar fuel savings on the 777 by using advanced engines and adding huge composite wings to a metal frame.

The prospect of gaining such savings with a more cautious approach delights both the airlines and Boeing’s investors, who would love to see it complete the development process without the kind of white-knuckle ride — or the extra billions in cash — that the Dreamliner required.

W. James McNerney Jr., Boeing’s chief executive, said recently that “we all remember the times of fighting through the 787 development where the technologies weren’t quite as mature as we hoped they’d be.” He said the company’s strategy in updating the larger 777, and creating two additional versions of the 787, was to “harvest some hard-fought gains” in that technology without taking such big risks.

Mr. McNerney said the new version of the 777, which is still subject to final approval by Boeing’s board, would include much more substantial improvements than most planes derived from existing ones and could be ready by the end of the decade. “So I think we may be in an era where we can absorb somewhat less risk and still deliver a lot of performance,” he added.

The company’s plans for the updated 777, known as the 777X, are also significant because it could be the last new model that Boeing builds before the 2030s. And the updating is not risk-free: advances in engine technology can prove difficult, and the composite wings on the new 777 will be wider and more complicated to fabricate than those on the 787.

Boeing’s efforts to seek advance orders for the plane will also set off an intense new phase in its rivalry with Airbus, one determined more by how efficiently each company can produce the planes than their visions.

“Airbus squandered a decade on the A380,” a gigantic jet that has had disappointing sales, said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. Boeing, he added, lost the advantage with its troubles on the 787. With the A350, which also has a composite body and wings, he said, “what’s important is that Airbus is catching up.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/06/business/aircraft-makers-shy-away-from-risky-bets-in-building-new-planes.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Japan Approves Return to Air of Boeing 787

April 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment

U.S. and European regulators have already approved Boeing’s plans to add safety features to the 787’s lithium-ion batteries that would minimize the odds that they would emit smoke or catch fire, after two units overheated on separate planes in January.

Late Friday, the Japanese Ministry of Transport followed suit, authorizing All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines — which together own about half of the 50 Dreamliners delivered — to resume flights of a plane whose grounding has affected tens of thousands of passengers.

The ministry is asking All Nippon and Japan Airlines to adapt voluntary safety measures, including adding monitors to the batteries to read voltage levels in real time, before the planes are brought back to service.

Akihiro Ota, the transport minister, said at a news conference earlier Friday that he was satisfied with the multiple measures Boeing had taken to eliminate risks of fire. “They have adopted defense in depth,” Mr. Ota said.

All Nippon said that teams of Boeing engineers had already started to replace batteries on all of its 17 Dreamliners and that fixes would take until the end of May to complete. The airline said it would start using the planes again for commercial flights when the fixes had been made to its entire fleet. Japan Airlines declined to speculate on how long the fixes would take.

All Nippon said its 787s would each undergo a test flight to “confirm that no battery-related failures occur during flight.” The first test flight is scheduled for April 28, the Tokyo-based airline said in a statement.

The airline will also install improved battery monitoring systems on its planes and put its 787 cockpit crews through additional in-flight training. After the planes are back in service, the airline will remove a sample of batteries to inspect to make sure the improvements are effective, All Nippon said.

All Nippon said it intends to set up a dedicated Web site to address passenger concerns about the safety of the 787.

“Only when we are fully satisfied with the safety of our 787 fleet will we return the aircraft to service,” Osamu Shinobe, president and chief executive of All Nippon, said in a statement.

U.S. and Japanese regulators have been investigating the Japanese-made batteries aboard the 787 after one caught fire aboard a parked plane in Boston operated by Japan Airlines and another emitted smoke during an All Nippon flight in Japan, forcing an emergency landing. The incidents prompted regulators to ground the entire 787 fleet.

Norihiro Goto, the head of the Japan Transport Safety Board, said earlier this past week that investigators remained unsure what had caused the batteries to overheat. But Japan was satisfied that Boeing had now considered all conceivable potential problems that could lead to a battery fire, Mr. Goto said.

Japanese airlines have been enthusiastic buyers of the 787, Boeing’s latest-generation, fuel-efficient plane. It is the first passenger jet to use lithium-ion batteries, which are more powerful, easier to charge and lighter than older battery technologies. But they have also proven to be prone to overheating.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/business/global/27iht-dreamliner27.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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F.A.A. Approves Boeing’s Plans for Fixing 787 Battery

April 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday approved Boeing’s plans to fix the plane’s lithium-ion batteries after two erupted in smoke and fire on separate planes. Boeing has deployed teams of technicians around the world to quickly install the modified batteries on the 50 jets that have been delivered so far and return them to service as soon as possible.

More important, the F.A.A.’s decision frees Boeing to resume deliveries of 787s in the next two months, a critical step for the plane maker and for airlines that have been eagerly awaiting the new, more fuel-efficient jets. Boeing said Friday that it would deliver all 787s that were planned this year.

The battery problems have probably cost Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars, and airlines are likely to seek financial compensation for the delays. Still, Boeing has not seen an impact on the 800 orders it has booked for the plane, which promises fuel cost savings of 20 percent. The 787 is the first commercial aircraft built largely from lighter carbon-composite materials, and it uses more electronic systems than conventional airplanes.

Investors appeared to have shrugged off the issue as well, possibly out of confidence that Boeing would fix the problem. The company’s shares rose more than 2 percent, to $87.96 a share on Friday, and the stock is up $10 since the fleet was grounded.

Investigators in the United States and Japan have still not been able to identify precisely what caused the batteries to overheat, and, in one case, ignite. Boeing’s fixes include better insulation for the batteries’ eight cells, and a stainless steel box designed to encase the batteries and contain fire and vent possible smoke or hazardous gases out of the planes. Mike Sinnett, Boeing’s chief engineer for the 787, said that the tests performed in the last month showed the batteries were now much less likely to overheat.

Boeing engineers have also made modifications to the plane’s power panels and generators, including replacing some parts and bringing components “up to the latest standards,” Mr. Sinnett said. Those changes were not linked to the battery system, and were not required by the F.A.A., he said, but they had failed in the past and caused problems before the planes were grounded.

The F.A.A. administrator, Michael P. Huerta, and the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said they were satisfied that the proposed changes would eliminate concerns that batteries could erupt in smoke or fire.

The changes “will ensure the safety of the aircraft and its passengers,” Mr. LaHood said Friday.

The F.A.A. will issue a final directive to effectively lift the grounding order and allow each plane operated by an American carrier to return to service as soon as it is modified. So far, United Airlines is the only airline in the United States with 787s in its fleet.

Boeing said it takes just five days for the new system to be installed and has dispatched 300 mechanics around the world to perform the work.

Aviation regulators in Japan and other countries must also weigh in and approve the system. Japan, in particular, is a critical market for Boeing. About half of all 787s delivered until now are operated by two Japanese airlines — All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines — and Japanese companies manufactured about a third of the plane’s components, including its wings. A Japanese company, GS Yuasa, built the battery.

The Japanese transportation minister, Akihiro Ota, said Friday in Tokyo that Japan’s own assessment of the safety of Boeing’s battery changes was “in its final stages.”

“We’re doing our best to ensure a safe and speedy return to service,” he said.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/business/faa-endorses-boeing-remedy-for-787-battery.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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F.A.A. Endorses Boeing Remedy for 787 Battery

April 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Agency inspectors will oversee Boeing’s work in adjusting the planes, the agency said, and both the F.A.A. administrator, Michael P. Huerta, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said they were are satisfied that the proposed changes would eliminate concerns that the plane’s two lithium-ion batteries could erupt in smoke or fire.

The changes “will ensure the safety of the aircraft and its passengers,” Mr. LaHood said Friday.

The decision was a major milestone for Boeing and its innovative jet. Aviation analysts said the battery problems this year had cost Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars and slowed its progress in fielding the planes, which reduce fuel costs by 20 percent and have been in great demand by the airlines. Boeing’s shares were up by 0.8 percent to $86.79 a share at midday Friday.

The 50 jets delivered so far were grounded worldwide after two incidents in January in which the volatile batteries caught fire or emitted smoke. Boeing has said the new battery systems are ready to go, and it would install them on the planes it has already delivered before changing the jets still in production.

Boeing’s fix includes more insulation between each of the eight cells in the batteries. The batteries will also be encased in a new steel box designed to contain any fire and vent possible smoke or hazardous gases out of the planes.

The F.A.A.’s decision marks the most critical step toward getting the planes back in the air. But flights won’t resume immediately. The agency said next week it would sign off on specific instructions that Boeing is preparing for the airlines on how to handle the battery system.

The F.A.A. also will publish a final directive that would effectively lift the grounding order issued in January and allow each plane to return to service as soon as it is modified.

And while the authorities in the United States may be satisfied with the Boeing fix, aviation regulators in Japan and other countries must also weigh in and approve the system. Japan is a critical market for Boeing. About half of all 787s delivered so far are operated by two Japanese airlines — All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines — and Japanese companies manufactured about a third of the plane’s components, including its wings.

The Japanese transportation minister, Akihiro Ota, said Friday in Tokyo that Japan’s own assessment of the safety of Boeing’s battery changes was “in its final stages.”

“We’re doing our best to ensure a safe and speedy return to service,” he said.

But Japanese regulators could ask Boeing for additional safeguards, the Nikkei business daily reported Friday. Japanese regulators remain concerned that investigators have not pinned down precisely why the batteries overheated in the first place.

Those extra safeguards could include adding devices to transmit voltage and other vital data to controllers on the ground so the batteries can be routinely monitored for irregularities, according to the Nikkei report.

Japan could also require test flights of each plane fitted with the altered battery, the Nikkei said. Regulators in Tokyo could also ask the airlines to conduct more frequent battery checks and retire the batteries after a set period, even if they do not show signs of wear.

Airlines are eager for the planes to fly again. Both A.N.A. and United Airlines had included the 787 on domestic and international routes in flight schedules that start on May 31, provided that aviation authorities lifted the plane’s grounding.

Another operator, Qatar Airlines, had suggested it would seek an even more aggressive schedule and wants to get the planes back in the air before the end of April.

Despite the grounding, Boeing has not seen any impact on the more than 800 orders it has booked for the plane. The 787 is the first commercial aircraft built largely from lighter carbon-composite materials, and it uses more electronic systems on board than conventional airplanes. As a result, the 787 promises significant fuel savings, especially over long distances.

Still, the government’s decision to approve the fixes was not a surprise. The F.A.A.’s engineers oversaw Boeing’s design of the changes as well as more than 20 types of tests conducted on them over the last month. Boeing had said that it had successfully wrapped up the tests in a flight by a 787 on April 5.

The F.A.A. approval also came before the National Transportation Safety Board hearings next week on why a battery caught fire in a plane parked in Boston on Jan. 7. The board is also examining how Boeing and the F.A.A. underestimated any risks in approving the original battery design in 2007.

By approving the fixes ahead of the safety board’s hearings, the F.A.A. — and Boeing — presumably hopes to deflect any criticism about how it originally certified the plane. The agency could argue that, if the risks were underestimated initially, the new battery system should prevent that from happening again.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/20/business/faa-endorses-boeing-remedy-for-787-battery.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Boeing’s 787 Takes Flight to Assess New Battery

April 5, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The company said it would analyze the results of several weeks of testing, which included blowing up the batteries in labs, and then forward the results to the Federal Aviation Administration, probably early next week. Aviation analysts said the F.A.A., which has overseen the testing, could approve the changes later this month if no other problems surface, and the planes, which have been grounded since mid-January, could be flying again in May.

Boeing has “a very good chance” of winning federal certification for its fixes, said Richard L. Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. But, he said, “there is a lot of political and regulatory uncertainty that could get in the way.”

The National Transportation Safety Board, which has been investigating a battery fire on a 787 parked in Boston on Jan. 7, plans to hold a public forum on Thursday and Friday on transportation uses of lithium-ion batteries, which are more volatile than traditional designs. On April 23 and 24, it will hold a hearing on its investigation into the Boston fire and the deficiencies in the F.A.A.’s initial review of the batteries several years ago.

Those hearings could add to a sense of political caution at the F.A.A., though its engineers have said they believe that Boeing’s changes are working. “And this is all complicated by the fact that Boeing doubled down on this approach and does not have a backup plan,” Mr. Aboulafia said.

The innovative planes were grounded worldwide after a 787 made an emergency landing in Japan with a smoking battery just nine days after the fire in Boston.

Aviation analysts estimate that Boeing and several airline customers could lose hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of the grounding, and Boeing is pushing to get the planes back in the air. Investors are also optimistic. Boeing’s stock rose $1.22 to close at $86.17 on Friday, adding to a rally that began after the F.A.A. approved the testing plan last month.

Boeing said the plane flown in Friday’s test was awaiting delivery to LOT Polish Airlines. The jet left Paine Field in Everett, Wash., at 10:39 a.m. Pacific time with a crew of 11, including two representatives from the F.A.A. The airplane flew for 1 hour 49 minutes, landing back at the field at 12:28 p.m.

Boeing said the flight was meant to demonstrate that the new battery system would work as expected during normal and abnormal flight conditions, though it did not specify the range of conditions it tested.

It said that the test flight was uneventful and that it would deliver the data to the F.A.A. “in the coming days.”

The F.A.A. approved more than 20 types of tests to determine if the new battery system would virtually eliminate the risk of battery fires, as Boeing says it will.

Federal investigators have said that one cell short-circuited in the battery on the plane in Boston and that the short cascaded through the seven other cells, setting off the fire.

Boeing has said that its new battery system has better insulation around the eight cells and between the cells and the casing. It also has a gentler charger to minimize stress and a new titanium system to vent any smoke or heat out of the plane to keep the batteries from getting too hot.

The insulation, made of heat-resistant glass fibers, is supposed to keep a short in one cell from spreading to others. Boeing said the two batteries on each plane would be sealed inside steel boxes that would limit the amount of oxygen nearby to minimize any chance of fire.

Most of the tests have been conducted inside Boeing labs. Friday’s flight was the only one to test the performance of the new batteries in the air. Boeing recently flew two other flights to test other systems on the plane.

The batteries are used to start the planes and to provide power on the ground. Boeing has said that it needs only a single test flight since the batteries are not normally used in flight.

If the plan is approved, Boeing and the airlines will have to monitor the batteries closely for many months. The safety board has said Boeing grossly miscalculated the odds of hazards with the original battery system. It also now has to persuade travelers that the new system is safe.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/business/boeing-completes-test-787-flight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,

Initial Tests of Battery by Boeing Fell Short

March 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment

As the nail pierced one of the eight cells, it accomplished its goal of setting off a short circuit. But only smoke, not fire, belched from the battery.

But the test and other evaluations that Boeing conducted while the plane was in development proved to be far off the mark in predicting what would happen when the plane was in use and led Boeing to severely underestimate the likelihood of a fire in the 63-pound battery.

Now, as Boeing tries to recover from a battery fire on one of the jets and a smoke incident on another that led to a worldwide grounding of the 787s in January, federal officials say it is crucial that the company collect better data this time from its laboratory and flight tests. That is particularly important, they said, since the cause of the jet’s battery problems is still unknown.

Boeing won approval on Tuesday from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin an extensive array of 20 types of tests to determine if its proposed new battery protection system works.

“It is clear from what happened in January that there are other ways for the batteries to catch fire that clearly weren’t captured by the nail test,” said Donald R. Sadoway, a materials chemistry professor at M.I.T.

He said the test — it is standard in testing lithium-ion batteries in cellphones, laptops and electric cars — measures just one kind of failure mode and represents an extreme short circuit of the battery in a very short period of time.

“It can work on a cellphone battery with a single cell, but you’re talking about a very different configuration here,” he added.

A preliminary report on the fire that occurred in a plane parked at Logan Airport in Boston on Jan. 7, released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board, provided new details of Boeing’s initial battery testing, including its reliance on the nail test for some of the basic data on the odds of incidents with smoke and fire.

The board’s report said that Boeing also gathered information from companies using the lithium-ion batteries in other industries and, based on that and the test data, it calculated that the odds of smoke being emitted from a battery was only one in 10 million flight hours.

Given that Boeing has never made its own batteries, it assigned other crucial tests to its subcontractors, including GS Yuasa, the Japanese battery maker, and Thales, a French company that oversees the battery charging system.

The F.A.A. also delegated much of the testing to Boeing, except for a safety assessment conducted once the plane’s electrical power system was certified. The F.A.A.’s decision to delegate some of its certification authority was done under a decades-old program meant to help the agency keep up with fast-changing technology but also to fill a gap in its own expertise.

In the course of the original testing, the batteries were also subjected to other kinds of destructive tests, including provoking an external short circuit, overcharging the batteries for 25 hours, subjecting them to high temperatures of 185 degrees Fahrenheit for an extended period, and discharging them completely. Boeing found that none of these tests in its computer modeling resulted in a battery fire, according to the safety board’s report, leading it to conclude that the chance of a battery fire was one in 1 billion flight hours, a negligible probability. In fact, the Boston fire occurred after the entire 787 fleet had flown with passengers for only 52,000 hours.

F.A.A. and Boeing officials said they did the best they could, given what was known about the batteries when the agency approved them for the 787 in October 2007. The innovative plane, which uses lighter-weight composite materials to cut fuel costs by 20 percent, makes more extensive use of the new batteries than any other commercial aircraft, and the F.A.A. imposed a series of special safety conditions to compensate for that risk.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/business/initial-tests-of-battery-by-boeing-fell-short.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: , ,
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