Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Boeing 787 Dreamliner completes test flight with new battery system. Boeing hopes to show aircraft meets safety standards following worldwide grounding of all 50 Dreamliners in January...the plight of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner...

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner took off on Monday in a test flight aimed at showing that the plane's new lithium-ion battery system meets regulatory safety standards, a key step in ending a two-month, worldwide grounding of the high-tech jet. The roughly two hour flight took off from Paine Field in Everett, Washington, and "went according to plan," and Boeing is now planning a second flight test "in coming days" to gather data for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which has to give its approval before the 787 is allowed to fly commercially again, Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said.

The two-hour flight on Monday carried six crew members: two Boeing pilots, two instrumentation engineers, a systems operator and a flight analyst, Boeing said. "During the functional check flight, crews cycled the landing gear and operated all the backup systems, in addition to performing electrical system checks from the flight profile." 

The FAA and other regulators grounded all 50 Dreamliners in mid-January after batteries overheated on two separate aircraft, one parked at the Boston airport and the other forced to make an emergency landing in Japan. Earlier this month, the FAA agreed on tests Boeing would conduct to return the plane to service. 

It's good news for Boeing, but only the first step in a long and open-ended process of restoring faith in the experimental carbon-skeleton based plane. The technical changes involve improved ventilation and insulation for the batteries, which would help expel flammable electrolytes and insulate the cabin in the event of a malfunction. But proving the effectiveness of the new system after the 787's high-profile issues may be more difficult. A second test is already scheduled, but the FAA has yet to say when they think the 787 will be ready to return to active duty.

Some Boeing officials have said the jet could be back in service by May 1, or earlier. But Oliver McGee, an aerospace and mechanical engineer who was a deputy assistant secretary of transportation under President Bill Clinton, said he was skeptical that regulators would service to resume so soon. "Take whatever date is agreed upon and add three to six months to it," McGee told Reuters. "I don't think that you're going to see any type of quick fix or compromising on the FAA side." 

McGee said the trauma of the Columbia and Challenger shuttle disasters would make federal officials reluctant to sign off on the new battery system until they were absolutely sure it would work as Boeing promised. 

So what exactly happened earlier in January? Boeing had just delivered just 50 jets, when lithium-ion batteries on two of the planes caught fire. (What remains of the battery is pictured below.) The two incidents, one in the US another in Japan, triggered a global grounding for the Dreamliner. 

On January 7, a Japan Airlines 787's batteries burst into flames while the plane was parked at Boston's Logan airport. That battery is now the subject of investigation but the National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), which has concluded in an interim report that short circuits across its eight cells hay have triggered the fire the NTSB has, however, not yet identified a root cause for the fire.

On January 16, in Japan, the battery on an All Nippon Airways 787 triggered a smoke alarm while in flight leading to an emergency landing. Japaneses investigators have yet to identify the cause of that fire. The immediate grounding of all Boeing 787 Dreamliners was issued directly after this incident.

Investigators in Japan and the US are now looking into what went wrong and have so far concentrated on the planes' battery systems. But Boeing executives have acknowledged they may never figure out what exactly caused those problems. It is the first time that lightweight lithium-ion batteries have been used so extensively on large passenger jets. 

The NTSB will hold a meeting on lithium-ion batteries in April, where the controversial technology will be discussed by airline and freight executives as well as safety experts and scientists. Lithium-ion batteries have caused fires in smaller planes, cars, computers and mobile devices in the past. Freighting the technology by plane is carefully regulated. 

Robert Mann, founder of airline consultant RW Mann, said it was a positive step that Boeing was testing the 787 but added: "Until there is a conclusive root-cause analysis a lot of folk will circumspect about the Dreamliner. At this point, it is not clear to anyone except Boeing exactly what they are testing. We don't know what the cause of the incidents were. I assume that they are testing the enclosure of the battery bit if it subsequently turns out that that was not where the issue started, we haven't learnt anything."

Resuming flights would be a relief for Boeing which is losing an estimated $50 million a week while the 787 is grounded, and has told customers it expects to have the plane back in the air this spring. Rival Airbus has dropped lithium-ion battery technology from its A350 passenger jet, apparently there is reason to believe that lithium-ion battery's aren't the best...