March 28, 2024

Boeing’s 787 Takes Flight to Assess New Battery

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

Lithium Batteries Are Not Necessarily Unsafe, Safety Board Says

The chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Deborah Hersman, said she did not want to ”categorically” rule out the use of lithium-ion batteries to power aircraft systems.

Then, referring to the battery fire last month on a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Logan Airport in Boston, Ms. Hersman said, ”Obviously what we saw in the 787 battery fire in Boston shows us there were some risks that were not mitigated, that were not addressed.” The fire was “not what we would have expected to see in a brand-new battery in a brand-new airplane,” she said.

The board is still weeks away from determining the cause of the Jan. 7 battery fire, Ms. Hersman added.

The 787 is the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries. Aircraft makers see the batteries, which are lighter and can store more energy than other types of batteries of an equivalent size, as an important way to save on fuel costs. The Airbus A350, expected to be ready next year, will also make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries. But lithium batteries are more likely to short-circuit and start a fire than other batteries if they are damaged, if there is a manufacturing flaw or if they are exposed to excessive heat.

Investigators are also looking into the special conditions the Federal Aviation Administration imposed on Boeing in 2007 to use the lithium-ion batteries, she said.

“What happens is that when an aircraft is certified it basically gets locked into the standards that were in existence at the time,” Ms. Hersman said. “Those are issues we do look at regularly in our investigations and it is something I’m sure we will be focusing on with the battery.”

Investigators have been working with the F.A.A. on a review of the 787’s certification for flight, Ms. Hersman said.

“We are evaluating assessments that were made, whether or not those assessments were accurate, whether they were complied with and whether more needs to be done,” she said. “I think that is important before this airplane is back in the air, to really understand what the risks are and that they’re mitigated effectively.”

Nine days after the battery fire in Boston, another battery overheated on an All Nippon Airways 787, leading to an emergency landing in Japan. The same day, F.A.A. officials ordered American carriers with 787s — there was only one, United Airlines, with six planes — to ground the planes. Aviation authorities in other countries quickly followed suit. In all, 50 planes operated by seven airlines in six countries are grounded.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/business/lithium-batteries-are-not-necessarily-unsafe-safety-board-says.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Inquiry Into 787 Batteries Expands to Other Components

Adding to concerns about the batteries, industry officials said that United Airlines had replaced three batteries on the six 787s it received from September through December because they were wearing out sooner than expected.

All Nippon Airways, the first airline to get the 787 and its biggest operator, said this week that it had replaced 10 batteries on its 17 jets from May to December. Investigators are now looking for these batteries and others from different operators to see if they can provide any clues to the problems that led to the grounding of all 50 787s delivered so far.

Investigators also are delving into Boeing’s supply chain. The National Transportation Safety Board said Friday that it would send an investigator to France to test a part that connects the battery to the plane’s wiring.

Besides the battery, this connector is the fourth component to come under scrutiny in the jet’s innovative electrical system. Investigators have also inspected the plants that made the battery charger and a controller unit, which are both in Arizona, as well as a facility that makes the battery’s monitoring unit in Japan. The battery itself, using a volatile lithium-cobalt chemistry, is made by GS Yuasa in Japan.

In releasing an update on Friday, the board said it was still testing the battery that ignited on a Japan Airlines 787 while parked at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Jan. 7.

Another 787, owned by All Nippon, made an emergency landing in Japan on Jan. 16 after the pilots received warnings of a battery problem and smelled smoke.

Kelly Nantel, the safety board’s spokeswoman, said the board was still performing laboratory tests on the battery that was badly damaged in the Boston fire.

Other government officials said there was still no leading theory to explain why the two batteries emitted fire or smoke.

The 787 is the first commercial plane to use large lithium-ion batteries. The battery for the auxiliary power unit is in the plane’s midsection. A second, under the cockpit, is the main battery and provides emergency power.

To assist in the investigation, the safety board has sought out the Naval Surface Warfare Center, which has worked with lithium-ion technology since at least the 1970s. Earlier this week, the board shipped the undamaged battery from the Japan Airlines plane for testing at the group’s Carderock Division, in West Bethesda, Md. Those tests, which included electrical measurements and infrared thermal imaging of each of the battery’s eight cells, found no anomalies, the safety board said on Friday.

Next week, the board plans to short all of that battery’s cells. The test could highlight any problems in the cells.

Investigators hope that the examination of other batteries that were replaced in the months before the Boston fire will yield some clues. All Nippon said five of the 10 batteries it replaced had lost most of their charge. The three United batteries that were replaced also showed low power levels.

Despite the two incidents with the batteries and the questions about their reliability, Boeing’s chief executive, W. James McNerney Jr., said Wednesday that the company saw no reason so far to switch back to older but less volatile types of batteries.

Mr. McNerney acknowledged that airlines had needed to replace the new batteries at a “slightly higher” rate than Boeing had expected.

“What we know is that the replacement cycle that we’ve been experiencing there has been for maintenance reasons,” Mr. McNerney said. “There is no incident where we’re aware of where a battery has been replaced due to any kind of safety concerns.”

But in an interview on Friday, John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, took exception to Mr. McNerney’s statement.

Mr. Goglia said X-rays of the batteries that had been replaced could show if there were any changes in their makeup and might provide clues.

Investigators have said there could still turn out to be minuscule defects in the batteries. But Mr. Goglia, who is now an aviation safety consultant, said the loss of charges in a number of batteries suggested that there also could have been a problem with the battery charger or the circuits controlling the battery.

“There could be something in the system that tells the battery charger what to do that is giving bad information, or something could be diverting the charge from being received at the battery,” he said.

As regulators and industry officials settle in for what could be a prolonged search for the cause of the safety incidents, Boeing’s engineers have been studying ways to better contain or vent any smoke or excess heat if a battery malfunctions.

Officials at the Federal Aviation Administration have said they will not allow the planes to fly again until the cause of the safety problems is clear and fixes have been identified.

Besides stopping all passenger flights, the agency directive that grounded the planes has also prevented Boeing’s test pilots from making flights.

Boeing has stopped delivering planes to customers, but it has not slowed production.

Industry officials said Boeing hoped to come up with interim safety measures, including more frequent inspections of the batteries, that might persuade regulators to allow it to resume at least the test flights. But the executives said Boeing, which floated a similar idea earlier, had not yet presented a new proposal to regulators.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting from Tokyo.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/02/business/inquiry-into-787-batteries-expands-to-other-components.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

More Questions Are Raised in Boeing 787 Battery Fires

In Washington, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Sunday that the battery on a Japanese plane that suffered a fire at a gate at Logan airport in Boston on Jan. 7 had not been charged beyond its maximum design voltage, 32 volts.

But on Tuesday, Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the board, said that while the flight recorder had not indicated excessive voltage, that did not eliminate the possibility of charging problems. Experts in lithium-ion batteries said the batteries may have been charged too quickly, a possibility cited last week by Hideyo Kosugi, an investigator general for aircraft accidents in Japan.

In Japan, officials said on Wednesday that air safety investigators had asked the national space agency, JAXA, to examine the battery from the Air Nippon Airlines 787 that made the emergency landing last week. JAXA will conduct a scan of the battery. Experts from the company that built it, GS Yuasa, intend to take it apart afterward and examine each cell.

Ms. Nantel said her agency had given information to the Japanese on the progress in examining the Logan battery. It underwent CT scans and X-rays. “We’re sharing our experience,” she said. “They’re several days behind us.”

Senate aides in Washington are organizing a hearing to examine how the plane was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration. The administrator of the F.A.A. and the secretary of transportation, are expected to speak on Wednesday about progress of the inquiry.

The safety board is leading the American part of the investigation, but the F.A.A. will decide what fix is required and whether to let the plane return to service.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/business/more-questions-are-raised-in-boeing-787-battery-fires.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

F.A.A. to Review Boeing 787s

The Federal Aviation Administration, in an unusual high-priority review, said it would focus on how the 787 was designed, manufactured and assembled. Michael P. Huerta, the F.A.A.’s administrator, said the agency would take a special look at the airplane’s electrical systems, including batteries and power distribution, and how they interact with one another.

The F.A.A. had spent 200,000 hours reviewing the 787 before certifying it for passenger flights, and officials have repeatedly expressed confidence in the plane’s safety. Still, officials said, the incidents of the last week involving electric components were forcing the review of the certification process as well as Boeing assembly standards.

“We are concerned about recent events involving the Boeing 787,” Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, said at a news conference in Washington. “We will look for the root causes of the recent events and do everything we can to ensure these events don’t happen again.”

The review came as the National Transportation Safety Board was investigating why a battery pack caught fire in a parked 787 at Logan International Airport in Boston on Monday. The fire occurred in a Japan Airlines plane from Tokyo after the passengers and crew had left the plane.

The battery, which powers the auxiliary power unit used when the plane is on the ground, sustained “severe fire damage,” according to the safety board. It took firefighters 40 minutes to extinguish the blaze, the board said. One firefighter was injured.

The F.A.A. review will not require the grounding of the 787 fleet, officials said. Boeing has delivered 50 of the airplanes since the first commercial flight in November 2011 and has received orders for more than 800.

Eight airlines now fly the 787: All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines in Japan, Air India, Ethiopian Airlines, Chile’s LAN Airlines, Poland’s LOT, Qatar Airways and United Airlines.

Boeing has much riding on the 787, which makes extensive use of lightweight carbon composites and packs more electrical systems than older planes. The company’s chairman, Jim McNerney, said on Friday that it was “100 percent behind the integrity of the 787.” The 787 is the first new airplane to be certified in the United States since the Boeing 777 in 1995.

“Every new commercial airplane has issues when it enters service,” said Raymond L. Conner, the head of Boeing’s commercial airplane division. Boeing will work closely with the F.A.A. during the review, he said.

It is uncommon for the F.A.A. to open a review of an airplane it has already certified, but the action on Friday pointed to increased concern by regulators.

The 787 relies more on electronics than previous generations of airplanes. Electrical systems, not mechanical ones, operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. The plane also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones.

This electric architecture helps cut energy consumption and makes the aircraft more efficient to operate. But by making such extensive use of electrical systems, Boeing introduced a higher level of complexity in the production of the plane, contributing to more than three years of delays.

Since much was new with the airplane, the F.A.A. and Boeing developed new certification standards. The agency also granted Boeing the authority to self-certify some of its work. Mr. Huerta defended that approach on Friday, saying the process had been rigorous.

Still, he said, the “the focus will be on validating the work done in the certification process and ensuring certification standards set are being met in the manufacturing process.”

“There is nothing in the data that suggests the plane is not safe,” he added.

Bettina Wassener contributed reporting from Hong Kong and Nicola Clark from Paris.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/business/faa-to-begin-a-review-of-boeing-787s.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Federal Panel Urges Cellphone Ban for Drivers

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday that it had voted to recommend the ban on the use of mobile devices by drivers, citing what it said were the risks of distracted driving.

The recommended ban applies to hands-free devices, a recommendation that goes further than any state law to date. The agency said it is recommending that drivers be allowed to use their phones for emergency purposes.

“No call, no text, no update is worth a human life,” said Deborah A. P. Hersman, chairman of the N.T.S.B., an independent federal agency that is responsible for promoting traffic safety and investigating accidents and their causes. It will be up to the states to decide whether they want to follow the agency’s recommendation.

She said the decision was a hard one because such a ban would be unpopular among some people. But she said its time had come, given what she said were growing distractions in the car and the spread of increasingly powerful mobile devices.

“This is a difficult recommendation, but it’s the right recommendation and it’s time,” she said.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=54a7718f921d5b6dee2545bbed3f3241

Rivet Flaw Suspected in Jet’s Roof

The National Transportation Safety Board, in an interim report, said that a laboratory examination of intact sections of the roof found rivet holes on one layer of the plane’s skin did not line up properly with an underlying layer. The board also said that it found paint from the exterior of the plane had bled through into the inside. Experts said that suggested the aluminum skin had not been properly bound together, leading to premature damage from fatigue.

The board, as is its practice, did not draw any conclusions about the cause of the rupture, which occurred at 34,000 feet. It will not do so until research is complete and its five members receive a report from the staff, something that will probably not happen for months. But outside experts said that the 15-year-old Boeing 737 probably left the factory with flaws.

“It means the assembly was wrong, it means the wrong tools were used, it means they were careless in drilling the holes, and maybe the drill was dull,” said John J. Goglia, an aircraft maintenance expert who is a former member of the safety board.

Robert W. Mann Jr., an aviation industry expert in Port Washington, N.Y., said such flaws were unusual. “The key issue is whether this was systemic,” he said. “ Why weren’t the parts rejected?”

Boeing, in a statement, said it would not speculate about the cause of the incident but that “we remain fully engaged with the investigation.”

The safety board said it was also examining the five other Southwest planes that were found to have cracks. Those five planes and the one that ripped open all had about 40,000 cycles of takeoffs and landings. After the Southwest incident, Boeing said it did not expect that these models of 737s needed to be inspected before at least 60,000 cycles.

In an emergency order days after the incident, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines flying those planes to check for cracks at 30,000 cycles.

The six planes were delivered by Boeing from 1994 to 1996. Boeing said it had completed a worldwide inspection of nearly 80 percent of 190 similar 737s and found no other problems.

An F.A.A. official involved in the investigation, who asked not to be identified because the agency had not taken a formal position, said it was too soon to know whether the agency’s inspection order would have detected bad riveting. But the official added that the results of that inspection did not show that there was any generic problem. In fact, it was possible that the Southwest airplane had a one-of-a-kind problem, the official said.

If the rivet holes on the two pieces of aluminum being fastened together did not line up right, that would mean they were egg-shaped instead of round, Mr. Goglia said. As the two pieces of metal were pulled in opposite directions when a plane is pressurized and depressurized, round holes would spread the forces evenly around the circumference of the hole. But if the hole is egg-shaped, he said, “they’re concentrated in one spot.”

The aviation industry is well acquainted with cracks developing around rivets as airplanes age. In April 1988, an Aloha Airlines plane peeled open almost like a sardine can, resulting in new inspection requirements. But that plane had 89,000 takeoffs and landings.

Hans J. Weber, owner of Tecop International, an aviation consulting firm in San Diego, said that manufacturing flaws were rare. “This is a real puzzle,” he said. “I am not fully satisfied with the explanation. The manufacturing of aluminum airplanes is very well understood.”

Mr. Mann said he was concerned about the paint. “These are not small defects that you could have wicking of the liquids,” Mr. Mann said. “Paint is not a thin substance. It is pretty substantial.”

If the parts were not the perfect shape as they came to the manufacturing plant, “that creates the necessity to redrill, which creates the ovalization,” Mr. Mann said, leading the parts to wear.

Analysts pointed out that there had been several problems in 1990s with planes that had been miswired or misassembled.

With major manufacturers like Boeing, the F.A.A. usually uses company employees to act as its designee in carrying out inspections, although it intermittently reviews their work. Mr. Mann said that in effect, “the F.A.A. designates the manufacturer as their own judge and jury.”

Matthew L. Wald reported from Washington and Jad Mouawad from New York.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=383b8316925d77cb509a1bf7f0d1ccb9

After Scare, Southwest Grounds Planes

“We’re taking them out of service to inspect them over the next few days,” Whitney Eichinger, a Southwest spokeswoman, said Saturday. She said they would be “looking for the same type of aircraft skin fatigue.”

In a news release, Southwest announced that it would cancel about 300 flights on Saturday because of inspections, and that customers should expect delays of up to two hours.

“The safety of our customers and employees is our primary concern,” Mike Van de Ven, Southwest’s chief operating officer, said in a statement. “We are working closely with Boeing to conduct these proactive inspections and support the investigation.”

The Southwest plane, a 15-year old Boeing 737-300, was cruising at 35,000 feet on its way to Sacramento from Phoenix on Friday afternoon when passengers heard an explosion. The Associated Press reported that one woman described it as “gunshotlike.”

The plane’s oxygen masks were released, and two people, a passenger and a flight attendant, passed out as the pilot descended to make an emergency landing at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station in Arizona.

Nobody was seriously injured, Ms. Eichinger said, and all 118 passengers chose to continue on to their destinations on Friday aboard a replacement jet.

Officials at the National Transportation Safety Board said the tear in the airplane’s skin was 5 feet long and 1 foot wide.

Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and the N.T.S.B. were on the scene investigating, the F.A.A. said in a statement. Manuel Johnson, a special agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said there was no reason to suspect terrorism.

Pictures of the airplane show that a flap of the aircraft’s skin near the overhead baggage compartments was peeled back.

“You can see completely outside,” one passenger, Brenda Reese, told The Associated Press. “When you look up through the panel, you can see the sky.”

Southwest Airlines’ fleet is made up entirely of Boeing 737s, and the 79 planes the company grounded were all 737-300s.

The emergency landing was not the only incident in the skies over the United States on Friday.

An American Airlines flight from Reagan National Airport in Washington to Chicago made an emergency landing in Dayton, Ohio, after two flight attendants told the captain they were feeling dizzy. Jim Faulkner, a spokesman for American Airlines, said they were investigating whether the plane had depressurized improperly. No other planes had been taken out of service.

And an Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight from Atlanta to Little Rock, Ark., made an emergency landing after hitting a flock of birds. None of the 48 passengers or three crew members on the regional jet were injured, and the plane was operating normally when it landed in Little Rock, said Kate Modolo, an airline spokeswoman.

CNN reported that the aircraft sustained substantial visible damage to its nose and that at least one dead crane was stuck to the front when it landed.

Regarding the Southwest incident, James E. Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said that the airline had “a good safety program,” but that the company worked its airplanes hard, scheduling flights with very quick turnarounds. “They pound their airplanes daily,” Mr. Hall said.

“The skin of the aircraft is like human skin,” he said. “Any type of puncture is serious.”

Two years ago, Southwest faced a similar episode when a hole ripped open in a plane’s fuselage and forced an emergency landing on a flight bound from Nashville to Baltimore. Earlier that year, Southwest was fined $7.5 million for safety violations by the Federal Aviation Administration.

In 1988, a flight attendant was killed and scores of passengers were injured when an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 suffered a 20-foot rupture in its fuselage during a flight in Hawaii. The flight, carrying 89 passengers and a crew of five from Hilo, Hawaii, to Honolulu, was at traveling at 24,000 feet when the tear occurred.

The pilots sent an emergency message to air traffic controllers and then guided the aircraft to a safe landing at the Kahului airport on the island of Maui. The right engine had been knocked out of commission by debris from the fuselage section that had been ripped away.

One flight attendant was swept from the plane, but passengers grabbed second flight attendant to keep her from being pulled out too. Sixty passengers were hurt.

Jad Mouawad contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/us/03plane.html?partner=rss&emc=rss