It could be a while before Boeing is able to recover from its Dreamliner nightmare.
Safety regulators said in a briefing with reporters Thursday that while they have a better idea of what went wrong inside the battery of Boeing's new-model 787, they still aren't sure what caused the problem.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating what caused a fire on a Japan Airlines Boeing 787 while it was parked at a gate in Boston one month ago. Days later, an All Nippon Airlines 787 was forced to make an emergency landing after there was smoke on the plane as an error message indicated there was a problem with the battery.
No one was injured in either incident, but they were serious enough for the Federal Aviation Administration to take the unusual step of grounding the 787s until it could be assured that the batteries were safe.
NTSB Chair Deborah Hersman said in a briefing with reporters Thursday that it is looking all the way back to the design and manufacture of the batteries of the new-model airplane. That calls into question the process used to certify the safety of the aircraft in the first place.
Scott Hamilton, an aviation analyst with Leeham and Co., said the new information points to the possibility that the airplane may not be back in the skies until next month.
?At this point, what it means is that they have more questions than they have answers,? Hamilton said.
The FAA, not the NTSB, will ultimately make the call on when the airplane can return to the skies. An FAA spokeswoman said Thursday she could not comment on when the airplanes might return to flight, and Boeing said that they also could not yet say when that might happen.
?We don?t have any timeline in particular,? Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said.
Birtel said the airplane maker was evaluating all aspects of the battery, including its design and manufacture.
Hersman noted that when Boeing was given the OK to use the batteries, it said that the likelihood that a battery problem would cause smoke was around one in every 10 million flight hours.
?The 787 fleet has accumulated less than 100,000 flight hours, yet there have now been two battery events resulting in smoke less than two weeks apart on two different aircraft,? she said.
The FAA said in a statement that it is looking at the certification process and the tests and design of the airplane's batteries.
Hamilton, the aviation analyst, said that it?s not uncommon for assumptions about untested technology to be proven wrong in the aviation industry.
Still, the mishaps have been serious enough to raise questions about the airplane?s safety in flight. The FAA directive means that U.S. commercial carriers cannot fly the airplane and Boeing also cannot conduct test flights of the airplane model.
Late Wednesday, Boeing did receive a partial reprieve when the FAA said the airplane maker could fly one of its airplanes from a site in Texas to Everett, Wash., where the 787s are assembled. That so-called ?ferry flight? was taking place Thursday.
United Airlines is the only U.S. airline that is currently operating the 787, but the new-model plane has customers in Japan and elsewhere. Boeing also has a backlog of hundreds of orders from airlines around the world.
Those customers are starting to get antsy, and that could prove costly to Boeing. Japan Airlines has estimated that the 787 grounding has cost the company $8 million, according to Reuters, and it is among several airlines who have hinted they would ask Boeing to compensate them for the financial hit.
A Boeing executive told Reuters that the company would discuss compensation after the 787 gets back in the skies. Birtel, the Boeing spokesman, told NBC News that the company has been in communication with its customers since the issues arose but that those conversations were confidential.
Aviation experts say Boeing?s woes stem in large part from the fact that the 787 features such a wide array of new and groundbreaking technology. Those advances are expected to pay off in years to come, if Boeing is able to stay ahead of the competition, but the new systems are causing serious headaches right now.
The airplane relies on lighter composite materials instead of aluminum, and also uses electric systems instead of hydraulics that are more typically used on commercial airplanes.
Boeing delivered the first 787 in the fall of 2011, more than three years after it had originally promised that the airplane would be available. The development process was beset by delays, which experts said was prompted in part by a decision to outsource major chunks of development and manufacturing to outside partners.
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/boeing-not-sure-when-787s-can-return-flight-1B8287299
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