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Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner catches fire at Britain’s Heathrow airport
Former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Mark Rosenker said the Heathrow incident was extraordinary news, coming so soon after the fleet had returned to service, but he cautioned against jumping to conclusions.
“It’s very early. No one knows where the fire started at this point,” Rosenker told Reuters, adding it could be something as simple as a coffee pot left on in a galley. Boeing said it was aware of the fire and that had people on the ground working to understand the causes of it. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it was aware of the fire and was in contact with Boeing.
“This is terrible for the Dreamliner, any event involving fire and that airplane is going to be a public relations disaster for Boeing,” Christine Negroni, an aviation writer and safety specialist based in New York, said in a telephone interview. “Because of the battery issue, the public is even more sensitive to events that happen to the Dreamliner. Even if they are normal, benign teething problems, that subtlety is going to be lost on the public,” she said.
Another Boeing Dreamliner operated by Thomson Airways returned to the United Kingdom due to technical issues as a precaution, TUI Travel said.
The Dreamliner resumed flying in April, with Ethiopian Airlines being the first carrier to put it back into passenger service. The new high-tech jet came under intense scrutiny and Boeing redesigned the battery system to add more layers of protection against fire. Boeing began installing reinforced lithium-ion battery systems on the 787 in April.
Teams of engineers were dispatched by Boeing worldwide to install the stronger battery casing and other components designed to prevent a repeat of the meltdowns that led to the first U.S. fleet grounding in 34 years.
The plan approved by the Federal Aviation Administration called for Boeing to encase the lithium-ion batteries in a steel box, install new battery chargers, and add a duct to vent gases directly outside the aircraft in the event of overheating.
