On the worldwide grounding of Boeing's Dreamliner aircraft, Mike Sinnett, vice president at Boeing Commercial Airplanes and chief project engineer of the 787 programme said at a press conference in Tokyo, Japan, this morning that “the return to flight could be approved within weeks.”
This follows Wednesday's announcement that the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved test flights for Boeing's lithium-ion battery redesign (see story here), the original design of which was cited as what caused the series of incidents with the Dreamliner aircraft in January (see here).
“[Sinnett] was referring to when the FAA might approve our Service Bulletin for the battery modification. He emphasised that he was not trying to second-guess the FAA,” confirmed Ken Morton, another Boeing spokesman.
“While we have already done all the testing approved by the FAA this week, we now need to do the tests under FAA supervision. There’s always the possibility that further testing may throw up further problems, although we think this unlikely. This makes predicting even a rough date of resumption difficult, and we won’t do that,” Morton continued.
“The modified battery system has performed well,” he added. “This is another milestone toward getting back into service. The 15 months of service so far have proved that this aircraft is the game-changer we promised."
"As soon as our testing is complete and we obtain regulatory approvals, we will be positioned to help our customers implement these changes and begin the process of getting their 787s back in the air," said Boeing commercial airplanes president and chief executive officer Ray Conner.
The webcast of the full press conference this morning can be viewed here and Boeing’s full report on can be downloaded here.
For further information, visit www.boeing.com
Alex Andersson
