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New Details on a 787 Fire, but Little Headway in Inquiry

March 7, 2013 by Leave a Comment

A mechanic who went to the electronics bay to investigate saw two distinct flames about three inches long at the front of the case holding the plane’s lithium-ion battery, according to a report released Thursday by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Firefighters, who were quickly called, found “a white glow with radiant heat waves” coming from the battery. The battery was hissing loudly and leaking liquids, and it seemed to be reigniting. Standard fire suppressants had little effect. A fire captain’s neck was burned, he said, when the battery “exploded.”

The new details about the fire aboard the technologically advanced aircraft were in a preliminary report from the safety board that provided the most comprehensive picture so far of the battery fire in the 787 that was parked at the airport and burst into flame on Jan. 7.

The 48-page report, supported by nearly 500 pages of technical documents, gave a detailed chronology of the investigation, and graphic descriptions of what took place aboard the airplane. What it did not say, however, is what caused the fires in the battery cell in the first place.

The report also gave more details about the steps Boeing took to test and certify the first large-scale use of lithium batteries aboard a commercial passenger jet. Some of those details raised questions about how Boeing could have misjudged the risks.

In broad terms, the report echoed what Deborah A. P. Hersman, the board’s chairwoman, told reporters last month — that the problems seemed to have originated in the battery, where one of the eight cells had a short circuit and the fire spread to the rest of the cells.

The incident in Boston was the first serious sign of trouble with the new batteries on the 787. All 50 planes in service were grounded nine days later after another aircraft, operated by All Nippon Airways, made an emergency landing in Japan when the pilots smelled smoke. The inquiry into that incident is being conducted by Japanese investigators.

The safety board released its report a day after federal officials said that the Federal Aviation Administration was close to approving the testing of battery fixes that were proposed by Boeing. That decision is likely to be made next week, and the tests could begin immediately.

Boeing officials said they had identified the most likely ways in which the batteries could fail. They contend that the proposed changes would minimize the odds of future incidents and protect the plane and its passengers if a problem does arise. Meanwhile, the safety board plans to continue its investigation, and said Thursday that it would hold a hearing on the hazards of lithium-ion batteries next month.

The report said the airplane involved in the Boston incident was delivered to Japan Airlines on Dec. 20. At the time of the fire, it had logged 169 flight hours and 22 flight cycles.

The plane had flown from Narita, Japan, and touched down in Boston at 10 a.m.

The flight data recorder showed that at 10:04 a.m., the pilots started the auxiliary power unit, which provides power while the plane is on the ground and is energized by one of the plane’s two lithium batteries.

That battery is in the electronics bay, which is under the main cabin, near the middle of the plane. The other lithium-ion battery, located in the front of the plane, provides power to the cockpit. It was that battery that emitted smoke in the incident in Japan.

The possibility that there could be a fire in the advanced plane was so surprising that the airline’s station manager in Boston, Ayumu Skip Miyoshi, could not initially believe the radio call he got from a maintenance employee who reported smoke in the cabin.

“I wasn’t sure what he meant, therefore I replied, ‘So you mean one passenger smoked in the lavatory?’ ” he said in a witness statement. He rushed from his office and tried to enter the cabin but could not see more than 10 feet from the door because the smoke was so intense.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/business/safety-board-reports-little-progress-in-787-inquiry.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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F.A.A. Weighs Dreamliner Fixes as Battery Flaw Remains an Unknown

February 21, 2013 by Leave a Comment

But as the day wore on, federal and industry officials said, Mr. Huerta concluded that the planes had to be grounded and that it was too difficult to create an “exit strategy” before he knew what had caused the problem.

Now, as Boeing prepares to present a series of possible fixes to him on Friday, Mr. Huerta finds himself almost back where he began. Battery and aviation safety experts say they think that Boeing’s proposals are on the right track, but that too little is still known about the problems to feel certain that the measures will solve them.

“They are steps in the right direction, but they may not be enough,” said Donald R. Sadoway, a professor of materials chemistry at M.I.T.

The stakes are high both for the company, which loses money every day that the planes are not flying, and for Mr. Huerta, who has to balance safety concerns with the airline industry’s interest in flying the planes again. Despite more than five weeks of intensive work, investigators have not determined the precise cause of the problems, which also included a battery fire on a 787 parked at a Boston airport.

Boeing officials say they have identified the most likely ways in which the new lithium-ion batteries could have failed. They are asking Mr. Huerta to sign off on changes meant to practically eliminate the odds of future incidents and to protect the plane and its passengers if a problem did arise.

Boeing has support for its plans from F.A.A. engineers and outside battery consultants, who have helped the company identify defects in its original design. But without proof of what caused the hazards, other experts remain uneasy about an approach that, by necessity, is still somewhat theoretical.

“Uncovering all the possible failure modes is not necessarily cut-and-dried work,” said John Goglia, a former member of the National Transportation Safety Board.

For instance, Mr. Goglia said, in investigating the deadly crash of a Boeing 737 near Pittsburgh in 1994, the safety board found that Boeing had protected against many possible failures, but missed the problem with the rudder that caused the crash.

“I think it’s a good idea to do what they’re doing,” he said of the company’s proposals to improve the 787 batteries. “My advice to the F.A.A. is to make sure it will deliver what they think it can deliver.”

Professor Sadoway said the F.A.A. would need to make sure that Boeing had added systems to cool the eight individual cells in the batteries to keep them from overheating.

Ralph J. Brodd, a battery industry consultant in Henderson, Nev., said that if the F.A.A. approved the proposals, it should also require airlines to check the batteries after each flight.

“They’re going to have to be particularly vigilant for some time,” Dr. Brodd said.

Mr. Huerta is not likely to make any decisions at Friday’s meeting, and he will consult with the transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, on what to do, federal officials said. The agency is likely to demand flight tests and more assurances from Boeing.

If everything works out, the jets could start flying again in April. But airlines are also being cautious, with United Airlines saying on Thursday that it would not schedule any 787 flights before May 12, and possibly not until early June.

Boeing contends that adding insulation between the cells of the batteries, among other changes, would provide enough assurance that the batteries were safe to use.

Its aim is to minimize the risk of a short-circuit or fire in one of the cells spreading to the others, as investigators say occurred in the battery that caught fire in Boston.

The company would also add systems to monitor the temperature and activity inside each cell, instead of just in the battery as a whole. And it would enclose the batteries in fireproof metal containers and create tubes to vent any hazardous materials outside the plane.

Dr. Brodd, the battery consultant, said Boeing was likely to wrap each of the cells in porous, ceramic-coated fabrics or glass fibers that might be about one-eighth of an inch thick. That insulation would separate the cells enough to keep them from touching during normal plane vibrations and to prevent heat from being transferred between cells.

The porous nature of the material would allow air to pass and keep the cells cool. The bulk of the insulation might also require Boeing to make the battery case slightly larger.

Dr. Brodd said that another possible cause of the battery problems was contamination from errant metallic shavings, which could have been left in one of the cells during manufacturing. Federal officials said Boeing had recently insisted that GS Yuasa, the Japanese company that makes the batteries, strengthen its quality control.

The emergency landing by the 787 in mid-January occurred in Japan. Japan’s Transport Safety Board said this week that temperatures in the battery on that flight surged over 1,221 degrees, melting the aluminum in six of its eight cells.

Hirohiko Kawakatsu, an official in Japan’s Ministry of Transport, said on Thursday that Tokyo would need to consider any possible fixes independently before it allowed 787s to operate in Japan.

“We will consider such fixes based on our own considerations,” Mr. Kawakatsu said.

Hiroko Tabuchi contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/business/faa-weighs-dreamliner-fixes-as-battery-flaw-remains-an-unknown.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Boeing Chief Executive Confident About Investigation

January 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The executive, W. James McNerney Jr., said government investigators were making good progress in narrowing the possible causes of a recent battery fire on one 787 and a smoking battery that forced another plane to make an emergency landing in Japan.

In a conference call to discuss the company’s financial performance, Mr. McNerney also said that reports of airlines replacing some of the batteries in the months before those incidents were related to maintenance and not safety concerns.

All Nippon Airways, which operates 17 of the new jets, replaced 10 batteries between May and December, raising questions about reliability, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.

Mr. McNerney acknowledged that the batteries had been replaced at a “slightly higher” rate than the company had expected. But, he added, “What we know is that the replacement cycle that we’ve been experiencing there has been for maintenance reasons. There is no incident where we’re aware of where a battery has been replaced due to any kind of safety concerns.”

Other Boeing officials said a maintenance reason could be faster-than-expected aging, or errors by mechanics, as opposed to a flaw that could start a fire.

Mr. McNerney said he would not speculate on how long it would take to address the safety issues and how much that would cost the company. Aviation analysts have said a financial worst case could involve Boeing switching back to older and less volatile battery technologies, like nickel-cadmium, to restore confidence among air travelers.

But Mr. McNerney said, “Nothing we’ve learned has told us that we made the wrong choice on the battery technology.” He added a moment later that none of the investigative findings “causes us to question that decision at this stage.”

Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board and their Japanese counterparts have said they have not found anything that could explain the fire and the smoke incidents on the planes.

Mr. McNerney made his comments shortly after Boeing reported a fourth-quarter profit that topped analysts’ estimates. The company also said it was not projecting at this point that the battery problems would have a significant impact on its earnings in 2013, though that could change depending on what the investigations found.

Mr. McNerney said in a statement released with the earnings that fixing the battery problems was the company’s “first order of business for 2013.” And even though all 50 of the 787s delivered so far have been grounded and Boeing has temporarily halted deliveries, Boeing said it still planned to deliver 60 of the planes this year.

Rob Stallard, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said in a note to investors that the company’s forecast of Dreamliner deliveries was lower than the 93 he had expected.

Mr. McNerney said in the call with analysts that two other factors would keep the deliveries from rising more rapidly. One is that Boeing is still reworking parts on some of the earliest planes it produced, when it was having problems with suppliers, and it will focus this year on finishing a subset of those that require the most work. He said the company also would begin building a second, larger version of the 787 this year, and integrating that model into the production lines could slow deliveries.

 The Chicago-based company said its net income was $978 million, or $1.28 a share, in the fourth quarter, or 9 cents a share higher than the average estimate from analysts. Still, the net income dropped 30 percent, from $1.39 billion, or $1.84 a share, a year earlier, when a favorable tax settlement bolstered the company’s earnings.

Boeing said its revenue rose 14 percent in the fourth quarter, to $22.3 billion, from $19.55 billion a year earlier.

For all of 2012, Boeing earned $3.9 billion, or $5.11 a share, on revenue of $81.7 billion. It forecast that revenue would rise to $82 billion to $85 billion in 2013 and its net earnings would be in the range of $5 to $5.20 a share.

The company also reported that it had $13.5 billion in cash on hand at the end of 2012, leaving it in strong financial shape to weather any further problems with the batteries.

The lithium-ion batteries are more powerful than older types but also more volatile, and the 787 is the first plane in which Boeing has used them. The planes are the most technologically advanced jets on the market, with lightweight carbon composite structures and new engines that combine to reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent from older planes.

Investigators have said it remains possible that the failures that caused the incidents involving fire and smoke stemmed from flaws in the manufacturing process that could be corrected.

Boeing passed Airbus in 2012 to retake the worldwide lead in aircraft deliveries, a title it had lost in 2003, and said it expected to deliver a total of 635 to 645 planes in 2013.

Mr. McNerney said it was likely to use the new composite technologies to update its larger 777 jets and seek to maintain that advantage over Airbus.

All Nippon Airways said it replaced the 10 batteries last year after a variety of failures that led them to quit working. Boeing officials said some of the batteries might have needed replacing because built-in safeguards had activated to prevent overheating and to keep the drained batteries from being recharged in a risky manner. Boeing also said that if mechanics improperly connected a battery, another safeguard would also render the battery unusable.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/business/boeing-earnings-exceed-estimates.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Prior Problems In 787 Battery Set Off Concerns Boeing Was Aware of 787 Battery Problems Before Failure

January 30, 2013 by Leave a Comment

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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Boeing Defends Safety of 787

January 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The 787 has been in operation for 15 months, and Boeing has delivered 50 airplanes so far to eight airlines, including All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines and United Airlines. Since then, a small number of 787s have had electrical fires, fuel leaks or other problems, prompting a safety advisory from federal regulators and a formal investigation into an electric fire this week. The National Transportation Safety Board is trying to find out why a fire broke out near a battery pack in the auxiliary power unit in a 787 parked at Logan International Airport in Boston on Monday. The fire occurred in a Japan Airlines plane after the passengers and crew had gotten off.

On Tuesday, another of the airline’s 787s, also in Boston, was delayed for nearly four hours after a fuel leak. And on Wednesday, All Nippon canceled a domestic flight after a computer on board erroneously showed problems with the plane’s brakes. These problems followed the forced diversion of a United Airlines 787 in December after one of its six electric generators failed in midflight.

Mike Sinnett, the 787’s chief project engineer, said on Wednesday that the program suffered from no more problems than any other new plane, like Boeing’s 777 when it was introduced in the mid-1990s. He defended the company’s choice to use lithium-ion batteries, saying Boeing was not looking for alternatives to them. And he said the 787 had a large number of redundant systems, meaning that if one or more failed, the plane could still fly and land safely. Testing demonstrated the 787 could fly for more than five and a half hours with just one electrical generator functioning.

“This is par for the course for any new airplane program,” Mr. Sinnett said in a conference call with reporters. “We have a responsibility and obligation to help assure people about the integrity and the robustness of the design.”

Asked whether the plane was safe, he responded: “Absolutely. I am 100 percent convinced the airplane is safe to fly. I fly on it myself all the time.”

Boeing declined to answer specific questions about Monday’s fire, citing the continuing investigation.

The 787’s operational reliability — a measure of how often it leaves the gate on time without a mechanical problem — is in the high 90 percent range, he said, a rate similar to the 777’s at the same time in its production life.

Potential problems with the electrical systems and batteries could be significant, because the 787 carries a lot more technology than previous generations of airplanes. It makes extensive use of lightweight carbon composites, has more fuel-efficient engines and relies mostly on electrical systems instead of mechanical ones to operate hydraulic pumps, de-ice the wings, pressurize the cabin and handle other tasks. It also has electric brakes instead of hydraulic ones.

Instead of drawing air from the engines to run these systems, the 787’s novel architecture eliminates most pneumatic systems and replaces them with electric ones. This increases the fuel efficiency of the airplane by 2 to 3 percent at cruising altitude, according to Boeing. Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s head of marketing, said in a statement on Tuesday that the 787 had logged more than 18,000 flight cycles and flown more than 50,000 hours.

Boeing shares, which had dropped more than 5 percent in the last two days, recovered partly on Wednesday, and were up 3.6 percent at $76.76.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/business/boeing-defends-safety-of-787.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Federal Panel Urges Cellphone Ban for Drivers

December 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

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

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After Scare, Southwest Grounds Planes

April 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

“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

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