With the temporary grounding of the 787 and the program review kicking off on the design and certification of this airliner, there is more and more fear of it.  I agree that the battery failure looks horrific.  Some (Christine Negroni is sounding particularly shrill to me.) are derailing into what, to me, seems like hysteria, over the battery failure in Boston.

The battery issue in Japan was not a fire.  It was found to be “swollen” and that it had leaked electrolyte.  An important issue but not a fire.

Facts are important in this situation and there is one hell of a lot of speculation going on.  So let me join in:

I find it very curious that these problems have cropped up suddenly and, so far, on one airline’s aircraft.  I keep wondering if there is something being done incorrectly in the operation of the airliner to cause this problem.  I would have expected more failures to occur at this point than what has occurred it was a fundamental flaw in the design.

It’s possible the quality assurance for the battery manufacturing is not very good.  It’s possible that the battery design itself is flawed.  It’s possible that the pilots are operating the aircraft in a manner that is overheating these batteries because of an unanticipated design issue. It could be a battery protection circuit issue or a design flaw in that circuit.

We’ll get the answers.  The problem will be solved in one way or another.

I even think the comparisons to the DC-10 and AA Flight 191 are a bit amusing in one respect:  Flight 191 happened because someone was performing an unapproved procedure to maintain an engine.  In other words, the aircraft was being handled incorrectly during maintenance.

But to run around shrieking “Danger! Danger!” is really kind of foolish.  Wait for facts, then make judgements.

Filed under: Aircraft Development, Airline Fleets, Airline News by ajax