A
fire on an empty Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane forced Heathrow Airport to
temporarily close both its runways Friday. The incident comes as unwelcome news for
Chicago-based Boeing Co., whose Dreamliners were cleared to fly again in April
after a four-month grounding amid concerns about overheating lithium-ion
batteries.
Heathrow
said there were no passengers aboard the Ethiopian Airlines plane, which was
parked at a remote stand of the airport, and runways reopened after about an
hour. British police said the fire is being treated as unexplained. Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said in an email
that the company had personnel on the ground at Heathrow and "is working
to fully understand and address" the situation.
Ethiopian
Airlines was the first airline to resume using the 787, with a flight on April
27 from Ethiopia's capital of Addis Ababa to Nairobi, Kenya, after the battery
incidents. The airline could not
immediately be reached for comment. Television
images showed nearly a dozen fire trucks on the scene at Heathrow and
firefighters standing around the Ethiopian Airlines plane, which was parked on
a remote stand.
Fire-retardant
foam appeared to have been sprayed, and it was not immediately clear if there
was damage to the plane. The Dreamliner
suffered battery incidents in January, including an emergency landing of one
plane and a fire on another. U.S. federal authorities lifted the grounding
order on April 19, and several airlines have recently resumed flying their
Dreamliners.
None
of the incidents caused any serious injuries. But the January grounding
embarrassed Boeing and disrupted schedules at the eight airlines that were
flying the planes. The company had delivered 50 of the planes worldwide. Boeing never did figure out the root cause of
the battery incidents. Instead, it redesigned the battery and its charger. The
changes included more heat insulation between each cell and charging the
battery to a lower maximum voltage.
Shares
in Boeing fell 6.5 percent to $99.58 on news of the Heathrow fire. Source (Reuters)
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