The new year is off to a rough start for Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, with one plane catching fire and another being sidelined by a fuel leak discovered just after it left the gate.
The problems started January 8th at Boston’s Logan International Airport when a 787 operated by Japan Airlines experienced an electric fire at the gate after everyone had disembarked. The very next day, another 787 operated by the same airline at the same airport had to return to the gate after the plane lost about 40 gallons of fuel.
The 787 has been under intense scrutiny throughout its long — often delayed — development and testing, and this isn’t the first, or even second, time there’s been an electrical fire aboard a Dreamliner. But the problems are not necessarily cause for concern. Aviation analyst Scott Hamilton says it is not unusual for a new airplane to experience problems early on.
“New airplanes have almost always had teething issues,” he says.
Despite lengthy and thorough flight testing, daily use by the airlines always finds new issues, Hamilton says. “Once the airplane goes into airline operations, and you have the rigors of airliner operations, which is really the ultimate flight test, problems emerge.”
The Dreamliner that caught fire on the 8th had been delivered to JAL last month. Employees cleaning the plane smelled smoke, and a mechanic discovered a battery had caught fire. The battery is in the same electronics and equipment bay where a fire forced the landing of a 787 flight test aircraft in 2010. That fire was traced to a foreign object in the electronics bay.
