So, Boeing knew.
Even before two battery failures led to the grounding of all Boeing 787 jets this month, the lithium-ion batteries used on the aircraft had experienced multiple problems that raised questions about their reliability.
Officials at All Nippon Airways, the jets’ biggest operator, said in an interview on Tuesday that it replaced 10 of the batteries in the months before fire in one plane and smoke in another led regulators around the world to ground the jets.
The airline said it told Boeing of the replacements as they occurred but was not required to report them to safety regulators because they were not considered a safety issue and no flights were canceled or delayed.
The only real question here seems to be why the FAA saw fit to ground the planes over something that the manufacturer claims wasn’t a safety issue. Something in the approval process is deeply flawed and air travel safety is no place for “He said/She said” spats about procedure.
Second look at Amtrak, anyone?
Were you aware that the electrolyte in these batteries is flammable? Were you also aware that the electrolyte is not just flammable but is infact an oxidizing accelerant, which means once it catches fire, you cannot extinguish it? See, thats the sort of minor fact that would have caught my attention in design review but it seems to have been missed at Boeing.
Were you aware that long before the batteries were flight tested, these same batteries caused a fire that destroyed an entire laboratory? This is also something that might have caught my attention during flight test. I might have accepted a unique and interesting battery but I sure as hell would have wanted it tested rather thoroughly before I would have called it ‘safe to fly’.
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020199686_787batterysafetyxml.html?prmid=4939
All new aircraft have issues and the 787 is certainly not immune from problems, but the likelihood of an in flight fire is exactly the sort of problem that is well within the authority and duty of the FAA to do what has been done in this case, which is order the aircraft pulled.
I am still a fan of the 787, but damn…
Are these the same lithium-ion batteries we can’t have in our laptops or out of their packaging (i.e., not connected to a computer at the time) while aboard an aircraft due to the fire hazard? Really? Hello, paging Captain Obvious!! Boeing, it’s for you! (All for the sake of being “green,” eh?)
I was reading in the English language Japan Times that both the battery and the battery monitoring system are supplied by two seperate Japanese manufacturers. The Japanese investigators found that the batteries were made to specifications but that it looks like the company that supplied the monitors that are necessary to warn and prevent thermal runaway, had supplied a product that was not ready for prime time. It is suspected that it only sorta worked. They speculation is that they had some problems during the testing phase then made some corrections in the design to fix the problems, then went into production of the design without further testing to see if the fixes were good enough. There is the possibility that the company management buckled under production deadline pressure. Be on the look out for metaphorical belly slitting.
“Second look at Amtrak, anyone?”
We can just take the intercontinental railroad over to Tokyo.