Boeing Dreamliner takes flight in Japan for first time in months

From Yoko Wakatusi, CNN

April 29, 2013 -- Updated 1020 GMT (1820 HKT)

Boeing's Dreamliner takes flight again

Sjekk video her: http://tinyurl.com/bv8yrmb

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW: Boeing: We will work with customers to return more 787s to flight in coming weeks
The All Nippon test flight took off from Tokyo's Haneda Airport, airline officials say
A Boeing executive is among those aboard, but commercial passengers were not
U.S. aviation authorities outlined steps recently to the Dreamliner's battery system

Tokyo (CNN) -- A Boeing 787 Dreamliner took off Sunday from a Tokyo airport, the first such flight in Japan since safety issues grounded the Dreamliner fleet, officials told CNN.

Japan had authorized passenger airlines to resume flying the embattled aircraft in the country starting Friday, authorities said.

The first test flight in Japan was Sunday, All Nippon Airways officials said.

It left Tokyo's Haneda Airport on Sunday morning with a team of All Nippon engineers, that airline's chairman, Shinichiro Ito, and Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner. The plane landed about two hours later without incident, Boeing said.

"With the successful completion of today's flight, Boeing will continue to work closely with airline customers in Japan and other countries on ... modification work to safely return additional 787s to flight in the coming weeks," Boeing said in a statement.

LOT, the Polish national airline, plans to begin commercial 787 flights on June 5 between Warsaw and Chicago. Later, it expects to fly its planes to New York, Toronto and Beijing.

Air India said it hoped to have flights by mid-May. The other airlines that own 787s are Qatar Airlines and LAN of Chile.

But it is in Japan where the 787 has a particularly difficult task in winning back confidence. The Japanese public has been subject to intense coverage of what first appeared to be teething problems of Boeing's next-generation 787 jet: a cracked cockpit window and a fuel leak.

Then a battery fire on a parked Japan Airlines jet in Boston in January, followed closely by a meltdown of batteries aboard a domestic All Nippon flight, catapulted the story into the nation's top headlines.

The All Nippon incident, which prompted an emergency landing, has been particularly damaging to the 787's image in Japan. All day, TV stations played footage of the incident, emergency chutes splayed on the tarmac, with testimony from distressed passengers to boot.

"I was terrified. I didn't feel alive," Masaaki Ishikawa, a 40-year-old office worker, told the Sankei newspaper at the time.

Now, some Japanese are understandably worried.

"I'd be a little scared about going on a 787, especially if I was one of the first ones back on," said Takako Aso, 69, a pediatrician who was about to board a flight from Haneda to the southern island of Kyushu on Sunday. "I don't usually check what type of aircraft I'm boarding, and I almost think I shouldn't start, or I'd be too nervous."

Banzai!

A ground crew bowed toward an All Nippon Airways 787 Dreamliner as it returned from a test flight at the Haneda International airport in Tokyo

Sertifiseringen av flyets batteripakke er i fokus

Source of 787 Battery Failures Remains Elusive

AIN Air Transport Perspective » April 29, 2013

by Bill Carey

National Transportation Safety Board chairman Deborah Hersman presides over the investigative hearing into the 787 battery design and certification. (Photo: Bill Carey)

April 29, 2013, 11:28 AM

As Ethiopian Airlines and other Boeing 787 customers prepared to return their Dreamliners to service with battery system modification kits, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) conducted an exhaustive, two-day investigative hearing into the design and certification of the lithium-ion batteries implicated in the airplane’s grounding. Sixteen witnesses testified and answered questions during the hearing on April 23 and 24 at the Board’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said the hearing will inform the Board’s investigation of the January 7 APU battery fire aboard a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston Logan International Airport, which remains in the “fact-finding” stage.

“While we do not know the cause of the JAL battery fire, within a month our forensic work identified the origin of the event: short circuits in [battery] cell number six that cascaded, in a thermal runaway, to other cells. The temperature inside the battery case exceeded 500 degrees Fahrenheit,” Hersman said in closing remarks. “The questions that were raised at this hearing’s outset, about how best to ensure safety and whether or not the certification process is flexible enough to incorporate new knowledge, are certainly pressing as we conclude this hearing… We must take a hard look at how best to oversee and approve emerging technology in the future.”
Representatives of Boeing, the Federal Aviation Administration, battery manufacturer GS Yuasa of Japan and Thales Avionics Electrical Systems of France, supplier of the 787’s electrical power conversion subsystem, appeared at the hearing.
NTSB technical experts interrogated Boeing 787 chief project engineer Michael Sinnett and FAA representatives about nine special conditions the FAA developed in conjunction with the manufacturer to certify the use of lithium-ion batteries on the 787, considered a “novel or unusual” design feature at the time. Those conditions took effect in November 2007 as a supplement to the aircraft’s Part 25 airworthiness certification. One line of questioning concerned the parties’ decision to forgo adopting a stricter set of requirements for permanently installed, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries known as DO-311, issued by standards organization RTCA in March 2008.
“That standard does not take into consideration aircraft systems that could mitigate some of those requirements,” said Ali Bahrami, manager of the FAA transport airplane directorate. “We actually tasked RTCA to start developing those standards for us. What’s really important to recognize is that we did not believe that there is an unsafe condition [with the 787 batteries] by not going to the later standards. Therefore, we didn’t take initiative to change the standards applicable to the 787 because we didn’t see any need for it.”
Sinnett said that Boeing’s testing regimen for lithium-ion batteries included driving a nail into a battery cell that “resulted in a short-circuit of the cell that wasn’t as energetic as we have seen in service.” While the company thought the nail penetration test would effectively induce a battery failure, “in retrospect I believe we don’t feel that it was conservative enough,” he added.