TOKYO –  Japan’s two biggest airlines grounded all their Boeing 787 aircraft for safety checks Wednesday after one was forced to make an emergency landing in the latest blow for the new jet.

All Nippon Airways said a cockpit message showed battery problems and a burning smell was detected in the cockpit and the cabin, forcing the 787 on a domestic flight to land at Takamatsu airport in western Japan.

The 787, known as the Dreamliner, is Boeing’s newest and most technologically advanced jet, and the company is counting heavily on its success. Since its launch, which came after delays of more than three years, the plane has been plagued by a series of problems including a battery fire and fuel leaks. Japan’s ANA and Japan Airlines are major customers for the jet and among the first to fly it.

Japan’s transport ministry said it got notices from ANA, which operates 17 of the jets, and Japan Airlines which has seven, that all their 787s would not be flying. The grounding was done voluntarily by the airlines.

The earliest manufactured jets of any new aircraft usually have problems and airlines run higher risks in flying them first, said Brendan Sobie, Singapore-based chief analyst at CAPA-Center for Aviation. Since about half the 787 fleet is in Japan, more problems are cropping up there.

“There are always teething problems with new aircraft and airlines often are reluctant to be the launch customer of any new airplanes,” Sobie said. “We saw it with other airplane types, like the A380 but the issues with the A380 were different,” he said.

 

Japan’s transport ministry categorized Wednesday’s problem as a “serious incident” that could have led to an accident, and sent officials for further checks to Takamatsu airport. The airport was closed.

It was unclear how long the Dreamliners would be grounded. ANA said 14 flights were changed to other aircraft, while 31 domestic and 7 international were cancelled. JAL said eight were cancelled, while two were changed to a 777.

ANA executives apologized, bowing deeply at a hastily called news conference in Tokyo.

“We are very sorry to have caused passengers and their family members so much concern,” said ANA Senior Executive Vice President Osamu Shinobe.

One male in his 60s was taken to the hospital for minor hip injuries after going down the emergency slides at the airport, the fire department said. The other 128 passengers and eight crew members of the ANA domestic flight were uninjured, according to ANA.

 

The grounding in Japan was the first for the 787, whose problems had been brushed off by Boeing as teething pains for a new aircraft. The transport ministry had already started a separate inspection Monday on another 787 jet, operated by Japan Airlines, which had leaked fuel at Tokyo’s Narita airport after flying back from Boston, where it had also leaked fuel.

 

A fire ignited Jan. 7 in the battery pack of an auxiliary power unit of a Japan Airlines 787 empty of passengers as the plane sat on the tarmac at Boston’s Logan International Airport. It took firefighters 40 minutes to put out the blaze.

 

ANA cancelled a domestic flight to Tokyo on Jan. 9 after a computer wrongly indicated there was a problem with the Boeing 787’s brakes. Two days later, the carrier reported two new cases of problems with the aircraft — a minor fuel leak and a cracked windscreen in a 787 cockpit.

The 787 relies more than any other modern airliner on electrical signals to help power nearly everything the plane does. It’s also the first Boeing plane to use rechargeable lithium ion batteries, which charge faster and can be molded to space-saving shapes compared to other airplane batteries. The plane is made with lightweight composite materials instead of aluminum.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement that it is “monitoring a preliminary report of an incident in Japan earlier today involving a Boeing 787.”

It said the incident will be included in the comprehensive review the FAA began last week of the 787 critical systems, including design, manufacture and assembly. U.S. government officials have been quick to say that the plane is safe. Nearly 50 of them are in the skies now.

 

GS Yuasa Corp., the Japanese company that supplies all the lithium ion batteries for the 787, had no comment as the investigation was still ongoing. Thales, which makes the battery charging system, had no immediate comment.

 

In Tokyo, the transport minister, Akihiro Ota, said authorities were taking the incidents seriously.

“These problems must be fully investigated,” he said.

Boeing has said that various technical problems are to be expected in the early days of any aircraft model.

“Boeing is aware of the diversion of a 787 operated by ANA to Takamatsu in western Japan. We will be working with our customer and the appropriate regulatory agencies,” Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is aware of Wednesday’s emergency landing in Japan and is gathering information on the incident, Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the board, said.

In Wednesday’s incident, a cockpit instrument showed a problem with the 787’s battery and the pilot noticed an unusual smell, the airline said. The flight requested and was granted permission to make an emergency landing at Takamatsu airport.

Aviation safety expert John Goglia, a former National Transportation Safety Board member, said the ANA pilot made the right choice.

“They were being very prudent in making the emergency landing even though there’s been no information released so far that indicates any of these issues are related,” he said.

But much remains uncertain about the problems being experienced by the 787, said Masaharu Hirokane, analyst at Nomura Securities Co. in Tokyo.

“You need to ensure safety 100 percent, and then you also have to get people to feel that the jet is 100 percent safe,” said Hirokane.

For more on this story go to: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/01/16/japan-787-makes-emergency-landing-due-to-battery-in-latest-trouble-for/#ixzz2IBHaINqV

FAA grounds Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner jets

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 sophisticated plane, the world’s first mainly carbon-composite airliner, has suffered fuel leaks, a battery fire, wiring problem, brake computer glitch and cracked cockpit window in recent days.

The FAA said it will work with Boeing and airline carriers to develop a corrective action plan to resume 787 operations as “quickly and safely as possible.”

Even prior to the FAA’s announcement on Wednesday, Richard Aboulafia, a senior analyst with the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va., said: “I think you’re nearing the tipping point where they need to regard this as a serious crisis. This is going to change people’s perception of the aircraft if they don’t act quickly.”

The 787 represented a leap in the way planes are designed and built, but the project was plagued by cost overruns and years of delays. Some have suggested Boeing’s rush to get planes built after those delays resulted in the recent problems, a charge the company strenuously denies.

Last week, both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board said they were monitoring the aircraft as part of a comprehensive review.

On Wednesday in Japan, All Nippon Airways Co. flight 692 left Yamaguchi Airport  shortly after 8 a.m. local time bound for Haneda Airport near Tokyo, a 65-minute flight. About 18 minutes into the flight, at 30,000 feet, the plane began a descent. It descended to 20,000 feet in about four minutes and made an emergency landing 16 minutes later, according to flight-tracking website Flightaware.com.

A spokesman for Osaka airport authority said the plane landed in Takamatsu at 8:45 a.m. All 129 passengers and eight crew evacuated safely via the plane’s inflatable chutes. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said five people were slightly injured.

At a news conference — where ANA’s vice-president Osamu Shinobe bowed deeply in apology — the carrier said instruments on the flight indicated a battery error, triggering emergency warnings to the pilots. It said the battery in the forward cargo hold was the same type as one involved in a fire on another Dreamliner at a U.S. airport last week.

“There was a battery alert in the cockpit and there was an odd smell detected in the cockpit and cabin, and (the pilot) decided to make an emergency landing,” Shinobe said.

Marc Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, told Reuters, “We’ve seen the reports, we’re aware of the events and are working with our customer.”

Japan’s transport minister Tuesday acknowledged that passenger confidence in the Dreamliner was at stake, as both Japan and the United States have opened broad and open-ended investigations into the plane after the recent incidents.

The 787 is Boeing’s first new jet in more than a decade, and the company’s financial fortunes are largely tied to its success. The plane offers airlines unprecedented fuel economy, but the huge investment to develop it coupled with years of delay in delivery has caused headaches for customers, hurt Boeing financially and created a delivery bottleneck.

Boeing has said it will at least break even on the cost of building the 1,100 new 787s it expects to deliver over the next decade. Some analysts, however, say Boeing may never make money from the plane, given its enormous development cost.

Any additional cost from fixing problems discovered by the string of recent incidents would affect those forecasts, and could hit Boeing’s bottom line more quickly if it has to stop delivering planes, analysts said.

To date it has sold close to 850 of the planes to airlines around the world.

For more on this story go to:

http://news.msn.com/us/faa-grounds-boeings-787-dreamliner-jets