When the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner finally appeared on the daily flight schedule of United Airlines last November, the air carrier’s management believed it had finally unwrapped a special gift that would boost its business and heighten workforce morale.
Production and testing snafus had delayed delivery of United’s first 787 by more than four years.
The formal 11-4-12 US launch of the 787 came as United (doing business as a combo of the old Continental and United Airlines) continued to iron out wrinkles associated with a difficult merger that’s two years along but far from done. Deployment of the 787 was seen as a “game-changer” by United’s boss Jeff Smisek. Seasoned and cynical air travelers without affiliation to an airline brand raved about the new plane after relatively short hops between the airline‘s domestic hubs. United’s current exclusivity as the lone US airline operating it made it a source of pride within the company. It was heavily marketed. The pre-departure safety video on every mainline United flight for months included boasts about the 787. Employee news briefs were near obsessive about the 787 to pump up spirits of airport workers who suffered through a 2012 summer marked by merger-related technology and operational hiccups.
The 787 was to be a shot-in-the-arm for an airline that badly needed one. It felt like a rally starter.
It still will likely be a great addition to the United fleet but for now the 787 is grounded. The US government ordered United to keep the Dreamliner out of the air until investigators can understand why battery packs on two separate 787’s operated by Japanese carriers overheated in a bad way.
The incident that caused the most consternation involved a 787 operated by Japan Airlines. Two weeks ago Monday, one of the airplane’s two battery boxes below the cabin floor started smoking after a Tokyo to Boston non-stop. Passengers had vacated but workers who stepped on board reported the smell while cleaning the cabin for the plane’s same-day return to Tokyo. Local maintenance responded and discovered fire in an aft compartment storing the battery.
The final straw came nine days later when another 787 had much the same problem, although this one involved the battery pack in the front of the airplane. A morning All Nippon departure from Yamaguchi to Tokyo was forced to abruptly divert to Takamatsu. Early in the trip, pilots observed cockpit indicators showing a battery problem. Smoke entered the cabin and cockpit. At Takamatsu, 129 passengers and eight crew members slid down emergency chutes in a rush to exit the plane. An inspection of the battery in question showed it to be charred and damaged. Flammable battery fluid had splashed about. All Nippon moved immediately to ground the 787. So did its rival Japan Air. Nearly half of the 49 787’s in operation across the world are operated by All Nippon (17) and Japan (7) Airlines.
Later that day (1-16-13), the FAA grounded the six 787’s operated by United. That prompted the handful of operators who fly the remaining 19 Dreamliners elsewhere in the world to follow suit.
The last time the FAA grounded an airplane by fleet type was 1979.
The “game-changer” is now on the bench. United’s most immediate operational concern in the wake of the grounding was its once-daily LA-Tokyo non-stop. The 787 debuted on that route January 3rd with significant fanfare. United has now temporarily plugged a 777 into that route while it waits for the 787 to get the go-ahead to resume flying from the FAA.
United has more than 700 other fit-to-fly mainline airplanes in its fleet so the grounding of six new birds doesn‘t put a big crimp in day-to-day operations. What would be deflating is if safety regulators fail to isolate a cause of the two battery flare-ups. Will the FAA determine that it can’t trust the lithium-ion battery technology unique to the 787? Could the fire that broke out on the 787 in Boston happen at 40-thousand feet over the Pacific? Or were the two lithium-ion batteries produced by the same manufacturer simply bad eggs from a bad batch?
Opinionated former Continental Airlines boss (and former Boeing exec) Gordon Bethune told aerospace reporter Dominic Gates of the Seattle Times that the FAA over-reached by grounding the 787. “They jumped the gun, but that’s the product of a cover-your-ass administration. It’s heavy-handed, draconian and way, way beyond what needs to be done to protect the public,” said Bethune who directed a sharply-worded barb at the top two US aviation regulators: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FAA administrator Michael Huerta. Said Bethune: “Neither of those two guys know the front end from the back of an airplane.”
According to well-sourced reporting by Gates, Boeing’s upper echelon agrees with Bethune that the 787 should not have been grounded.
I certainly wouldn’t argue with LaHood or the FAA despite Bethune’s assertion they lack the qualifications to make such a call. Erring on the side of safety after two battery packs put their immediate surroundings at risk seems to me to be the right thing to do. In fact, I find it odd the FAA waited until after the second incident to issue the directive. After Boston, Huerta went out of his way to defend the airplane. “We are confident the aircraft is safe,” he said on 1-11-13. The second incident over Japanese airspace is arguably less worrisome yet that’s what triggered the grounding. Perhaps the decisiveness of Japan’s top two carriers forced the FAA’s hand. Active airline bosses at carriers that operate the plane have been mostly mum. While it hurts business, the burden to diagnose and find a fix sufficient to lift the FAA grounding order is on Boeing.
Bethune’s open mockery of US government aviation safety regulators wouldn’t typically befit a man of his stature and experience. Yet maybe he has inside knowledge that allows him to be so publicly confident the lithium-ion burst jobs are blips on the radar that won’t be reappear. Otherwise, why be so aggressively insistent the plane keep flying? In Bethune’s current place as an industry outsider with vast insider experience, he’d bear no direct culpability should the 787’s precious payload face danger had it kept flying.
I’ve read enough about problems with lithium-ion batteries powering other devices to learn it’s a technology that’s not beyond fail-proof. As much as I’m rooting for the success of the 787, I support an unhurried probe of the plane’s unique reliance on lithium-ion power. I would hope the plane’s return to the skies would wait until it’s clear the battery boxes pose zero threat to the airframe, other mechanisms or the pilot’s ability to fly should the battery burst or fail. Contain it. Replace it. Whatever it takes.
