Boeing Dreamliner Catches Fire At Britain’s Heathrow Airport

Aviation Nigeria

A Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by Ethiopian Airlines caught fire at Britain’s Heathrow airport on Friday in a fresh blow for the U.S. plane-maker which earlier this year was forced to ground the new planes for three months after battery fires.

Boeing shares tumbled by as much as 7 percent, wiping $5.4 billion off its market capitalization after television footage showed the Dreamliner surrounded by foam used by firefighters at Heathrow. At 1745 GMT, shares were down 3.2 percent at $103.50.

Heathrow briefly closed both its runways to deal with the fire which broke out while the aircraft was parked at a remote stand. There were no passengers aboard the plane.

Television footage showed an area on the fuselage in front of the tail that appeared to be scorched.

It was not clear if the fire was related to the batteries, which were the cause of the previous fires on the Dreamliner.

“A Boeing 787 Dreamliner suffered an on board internal fire,” a Heathrow spokeswoman said. “The plane is now parked at a remote parking stand several hundred meters away from any passenger terminals.”

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 PR 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.

Ethiopian Airlines said its aircraft had been parked at Heathrow for more than eight hours before smoke was detected

U.S. airline pilots to need more flight time

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The United States will increase the flight experience required of pilots on U.S. airlines, a long-awaited move not related to the crash last weekend of an Asiana Airlines plane in San Francisco.

The new rules, which will take effect later this week or next week once they are published in the Federal Register, stem in part from a plane crash near Buffalo in 2009 that killed 50 people, the Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday.

First officers, or co-pilots, will now need Airline Transport Pilot certificates to take control of U.S. commercial jetliners or cargo planes. The certificates are earned with 1,500 hours of total flight time. Previously, a co-pilot needed only a commercial certificate, requiring 250 hours.

Captains would still need at least 1,500 hours of flight time but now 1,000 hours would have to be logged as a co-pilot on a commercial carrier. Previously, those hours could be earned in flight school or military training.

Bob Coffman, an American Airlines captain who is also chairman of its pilots union's government affairs committee, said the additional requirement of the ATP certificate would ensure that co-pilots have a variety of flying experiences.

"In this day ... where we are more and more dependent on having two competent pilots at the controls, it does not make much sense for one of the pilots to be significantly less qualified than the other pilot," Coffman said.

The new regulations stem in part from a crash in February 2009 in which a Bombardier DHC-8-400 plunged into a snow-covered neighborhood as it neared Buffalo, New York, killing 49 people on board and one person on the ground. The crash of the Colgan Air flight, operating as Continental Connection flight 3407, raised questions about pilot training.

In that accident, investigators said, the pilot failed to respond appropriately to a "stick-shaker" warning of a potential stall from low air speed - similar conditions to those under investigation in the Saturday crash of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 in San Francisco, which killed two people and injured more than 180.

The new FAA rules would not apply to the pilots of the Asiana flight, however, since they are not pilots for a U.S. airline.

FAA spokesman Les Dorr said there was no link between the pilot qualification rules and Saturday's Asiana plane crash in San Francisco.

"This ruling has been in the works for a couple of years now," Dorr said.

The FAA has drawn criticism from the National Transportation Safety Board for taking years to develop the rules.

"The NTSB notes that human factors concerns associated with low airspeed do not require more than 6 years of study for a solution to be implemented," the NTSB said in a 2010 report on the Colgan accident.

Rep. Rick Larsen, the ranking member on the House aviation subcommittee, said the long period in adopting the rules was a concern. "It's fair to be somewhat critical of the FAA for taking a long time to get these rules up running," he said.

FAA Orders U.S airlines to stop operating the Boeing 787

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The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered U.S. airlines to stop operating the Boeing 787, after a series of battery and fuel system failures have called into question the airworthiness of the newly developed composite aircraft.

The latest incident, an emergency landing in Japan after an apparent battery failure, forced the regulatory agency to act, officials said in a statement Wednesday.

"As a result of an in-flight, Boeing 787 battery incident earlier today in Japan, the FAA will issue an emergency airworthiness directive (AD) to address a potential battery fire risk in the 787 and require operators to temporarily cease operations," the FAA statement reads.

"Before further flight, operators of U.S.-registered, Boeing 787 aircraft must demonstrate to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that the batteries are safe," the statement continues.

The directive effectively only targets one U.S. carrier, United, which operates six of the aircraft, the FAA says, though other non-U.S. airlines also fly the 787 into American airports.

On Friday, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said "I believe this plane is safe, and I would have absolutely no reservations about boarding one of these planes and taking a flight," the Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, the European Aviation Safety Agency ordered all European carriers to ground the Boeing 787 on Thursday, the Associated Press reports.

Qatar Airlines also announced Thursday that they would ground their fleet of 5 787s pending the FAA review as well as one by Qatar's Civil Aviation Authority, Reuters reports. 

Additionally, Air India has announced plans to ground their fleet of 6 787s until the FAA's investigation (and that of the Indian aviation authority) gives the all clear, according to the Associated Press.

"Now that the FAA has said that they want to check (the) electrical system in all the planes we will ground them...How serious is the problem, how long it will take, we'll know only in a couple of days," Aviation Minister Ajit Singh told reporters.

From the Associated Press, 01/16/2013 10:17 pm EST