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A fire on a parked Ethiopian Airlines Dreamliner plane has forced both runways at Heathrow Airport to close. No injuries were reported and nobody was on board the aircraft, which was stationed at a remote parking stand. Ethiopian Airlines said it had been there for more than eight hours before smoke was detected, adding that "the cause of the incident is under investigation by all concerned." A spokesperson for Heathrow said the plane suffered an internal fire and that the airport's emergency services attended the scene. Ethiopian Airlines was the first airline to resume using the 787 after Boeing temporarily...

Now that Boeing has placed most of its 787s back into service, including those inUnited Airlines’ fleet, executives with both corporations are putting a happy face on the expensive hardship that was caused by the four-month grounding of the planes due to fire hazard risks. United reinstated the so-called Dreamliners on May 20, when United CEO Jeff Smisek and Boeing CEO Jim McNerney hopped a flight from Houston to Chicago to show the troubles with the plane’s lithium ion batteries were behind them. "I’ll tell you, Jim,” said Smisek, as recounted by the Associated Press, “it was a fairly expensive...

Just days after Boeing's 787 Dreamliner was officially cleared to fly by U.S. regulators, Boeing CEO Jim McNerney said the plane's 100-day grounding did not and will not have a significant financial impact on the Chicago-based aircraft maker. McNerney, speaking after Chicago-based Boeing's annual meeting at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago on Monday, said some fixes are "big and huge and others are less financially impactful."

"Attention ladies and gentlemen, the Boeing 787Dreamliner will depart shortly – any potential fires caused by our lithium ion batteries will now be contained within the aircraft. Please line up at the gate for imminent boarding!” Are you ready? In case you missed it the Federal Aviation Administration, by publishing an Airworthiness Directive in the Federal Register last week, opened the door for the troubled “green” aircraft to return to service in the coming months. The document lays out the specifications required for Boeing to get the extremely costly project moving again, if the changes are implemented and FAA inspectors...

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Friday that it has formally approved Boeing’s design for modifications to the 787 Dreamliner battery system, clearing the way to end the plane’s three-month grounding. FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said the agency hasn’t changed the Dreamliner’s ETOPS (“extended operations”) certification, which means the 787 will have continued approval to fly up to three hours away from the nearest airport. Michael Huerta, head of the FAA, told a Senate hearing Tuesday that ETOPS approval was under review. The decision not to reduce the three-hour limit is crucial to the jet’s use for flying long routes...

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Boeing is expanding in South Carolina and will invest another $1 billion, creating 2,000 new jobs during the next eight years, the aerospace giant announced Tuesday. Company spokeswoman Candy Eslinger said the company, which operates a 787 assembly plant in North Charleston, will expand its operations. The first of the new 787s made in South Carolina rolled off the assembly line about a year ago.

Boeing said its flight of a 787 on Friday should wrap up the testing for its fix of the battery problems that have kept the plane grounded. Boeing called the flight "the final certification test for the new battery system." The next step will be for the Federal Aviation Administration to decide whether Boeing's battery fix is good enough for airlines to safely fly it again. Friday's flight took off from Paine Field in Everett, Wash., according to flight-tracking service FlightAware. It returned one hour and 49 minutes later. The test was "to demonstrate that the new system performs as...

Boston airport firefighters encountered sizzling liquid and a hissing, “exploding” battery when they entered the 787 at the center of a two-month-long National Transportation Safety Board investigation, according to documents released Thursday. The NTSB said Thursday it plans two public hearings next month, one to explore lithium-ion battery technology in general and another to discuss the design and certification of the Boeing 787 battery system. The safety agency announced the hearings as it released an interim factual report and 499 pages of related documents on its investigation of the Japan Airlines 787 fire at the Boston airport on January 7....

A short circuit inside one cell started the 787 battery fire, and assumptions used to certify the battery system proved wrong, the NTSB said Thursday.The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has pinpointed the start of the 787 Dreamliner battery fire on a parked Japan Airlines jet a month ago today as a short circuit inside a single cell. The agency still hasn’t identified the cause of the initial short circuit but has narrowed down the suspects. Details provided by the NTSB make clear that Boeing will have to redesign the battery for a long-term fix. In addition, the NTSB pointed...

With the revelation that All Nippon Airways replaced defectivelithium ion batteries 10 times,Japan Air Lines replaced“quite a few,” andUnited Airlines replaced “multiple batteries,” in the months preceding the smoke emergency that grounded their Dreamliners, is there anything that can be said about the technology that can overcome its now-horrible reputation? Boeing has worked on the 787 for 10 years or so, with an ample amount of time to determine what kind of battery technology would be functional with the“super-efficient” jet with “exceptional environmental performance.” Had the Chicago-based manufacturer –and its airline customers – concerned themselves more with achievable plans that...

The crisis that has enveloped Boeing over the grounded Dreamliner, at a cost of billions of dollars in losses in addition to what has already been “invested” in it -- voluntarily by its owner/investors and coercively from taxpayers – exemplifies perhaps more than any other redistributionist corporatism scheme why government intervention is more headache than help. Pass the industrial-strength Excedrin. Of immediate concern to the Chicago-based jet-manufacturer is the lithium-ion battery that powers so many of the 787’s critical functions. Two instances of “thermal runaway” on Dreamliners’ owned by Japan-based airlines caused that country, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration,to...

Nobody is allowed to fly them. But Boeing can't stop churning them out. A federal probe into electrical fires has grounded all 50 Boeing 787 Dreamliners around the world. But Boeing has little choice but to keep its assembly lines in South Carolina and Washington State running at their normal pace, building five jets a month. A significant slowdown in production, let alone a full shutdown, would be too costly for both Boeing and its suppliers who are counting on making parts for the aircraft.

When Federal Aviation Administration officials grounded Boeing's fleet of 787 Dreamliner commercial jets last week due to unexplained battery fires, one of President Obama's favorite green energy technologies got another black eye. Technologists and safety experts had long warned of problems with the lithium ion battery when in 2009 the president began betting billions of tax dollars that it should be the green power of choice for cars, trucks, and even aircraft.

Airlines scrambled on Thursday to rearrange flights as Europe, Japan and India joined the United States in grounding Boeing's 787 Dreamliner passenger jets while battery-related problems are investigated. The lightweight, mainly carbon-composite plane has been plagued by recent mishaps - including an emergency landing of a Japanese domestic flight on Wednesday after warning lights indicated a battery problem - raising concerns over its use of new technology, such as lithium-ion batteries. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday temporarily grounded Boeing's newest commercial airliner, saying carriers would have to demonstrate the batteries were safe before the planes could resume...

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration says it is requiring airlines to temporarily stop flying Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday ordered U.S. airlines to temporarily stop flying Boeing's 787 Dreamliner following a series of mishaps. The agency said the decision to ground Boeing 787s was prompted by a second incident involving lithium ion battery failure. Earlier Wednesday, Japan's two leading airlines grounded their fleets of Boeing 787s after one of the Dreamliner passenger jets made an emergency landing.

The Federal Aviation Administration this morning announced a comprehensive review of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner -- including the company’s plant in North Charleston -- in light of a series of recent incidents. The review will focus on the technologically advanced jet’s extensive electric system but will not be limited to any one aspect of the program or any one of the recent glitches, according to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. Despite his agency’s decision to undertake an open-ended look at Boeing’s prize jet program, Huerta emphasized that the 787 is safe to fly. “Nothing we have seen would indicate that this airplane...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal safety investigators intensified their scrutiny of a Monday fire aboard a Boeing 787 as concerned investors sold shares in the aircraft maker for a second day. Boeing on Tuesday confirmed that the fire aboard a Japan Airlines plane appeared to have started in a battery pack for the plane’s auxiliary power unit. The National Transportation Safety Board described the fire damage to the battery as ‘‘severe,’’ and said it is sending two more investigators to examine the Japan Airlines plane. It also formed investigative groups to look at the plane’s electrical systems as well as the...

The Dreamliner, with passengers, has finally landed. United Airlines landed its inaugural domestic flight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft Sunday morning at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, becoming the first U.S. carrier to fly the composite-plastic-fuselage aircraft. The twin-aisle plane, delayed more than three years by production problems at Boeing Co., was designed to be about 20% more fuel efficient and less costly to maintain than similar-size planes. Half the plane is made of strong and light composite materials, including the fuselage and wings, instead of metal. …

The engine installed on every Boeing 787 built in South Carolina so far has a problem. The first sign something was wrong came on a Saturday afternoon in July when the second locally made Dreamliner experienced a pre-flight engine failure as it accelerated down the runway at Charleston International Airport. A month and a half later, the extent of the defect has become clearer — and bigger. The North Charleston incident was not isolated, as had been the original hope. Instead, two other General Electric-made GEnx engines have been found to suffer from a similar defect in the drive shaft....

A Boeing 787 jet took corporate loyalty to new heights when it "drew" the letters "787" followed by the company's logo across several thousand miles of North American skies. The etching of the letters and logo, while not visible from the ground, can be seen in the flight path plans.