The Dreamliner's Continuing Woes

[Guest anonone]

United Airlines drops Boeing 787 Dreamliner through June 5

 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2013/02/21/united-airlines-drops-boeing-787-dreamliner-through-june-5/#ixzz2LZgzbqsM

 

 

 

 

United Airlines cut the grounded Boeing 787 from its flying plans at

least until June and postponed its new Denver-to-Tokyo flights on

Thursday, as airlines continued to tear up their schedules while the

plane is out of service

 

 

LOT Polish Airlines has said it will keep its 787s grounded through October.

 

Seems there is still quite a bit of time until we see these in the air.  I also have to wonder how ETOPS will be factored into the return to flying.

 

 

[Guest thaiworthy]

United Airlines drops Boeing 787 Dreamliner through June 5

 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2013/02/21/united-airlines-drops-boeing-787-dreamliner-through-june-5/#ixzz2LZgzbqsM

 

Seems there is still quite a bit of time until we see these in the air.  I also have to wonder how ETOPS will be factored into the return to flying.

 

 

I am beginning to see why it's called The Dream-liner.

[Guest fountainhall]

I also have to wonder how ETOPS will be factored into the return to flying.

 

A very pertinent point! In the first article quoted in Post #47 above, an incident involving a United Airlines 777 engine failure engine which required over 3 hours flying to an alternate airport is cited -

 

 

In August, 2003, a United Airlines 777 flying nonstop from New Zealand to Los Angeles lost an engine beyond the halfway point and diverted to Kona, on the west coast of Hawaii’s Big Island. Pushing against strong headwinds, it took 192 minutes to reach the runway—a record for ETOPS diversions (and a white-knuckle experience for the passengers).

 

192 minutes was very close to the maximum of 207 minutes permitted for that aircraft (even though such consideration would be largely theoretical in any emergency). But it illustrates the robustness of the conservatively designed aircraft. As a result of many years of fail-safe operations, I note that in 2011 the ETOPS range for the long-distance version of the 777 was actually increased to 330 minutes, thereby enabling the plane to fly non-stop from Sydney to Buenos Aires over both the south Pacific and Atlantic, or on different fuel-saving routes over the North Pole.

 

But the 777 extended range versions are big birds, accommodating between 350 and 420 passengers, vastly more than the 787. In 2-class layouts, with 46 premium seats on ANA, the aircraft can be configured with as few as 158 seats in total. Cutting the premium lie-flat seats to 30, LAN's configuration has 247 seats. Qatar with only 22 premium seats, increases the total of 254.

 

Since a vital sales tool is its ability to fly long distances point-to-point, my hunch is that Boeing needs that 330 minute ETOPS range for the Dreamliner. With the merest hint of the possibility of a fire on board, no matter what protection systems are in place I for one won't go near any Dream-liner  !

[Guest fountainhall]

One Dream-liner related issue that completely baffles me is this. Why has Boeing’s share price not tanked? It is presently hovering around $76.60, having been as low as just $73.50 on 29 January and as high as $77.50 on 7 February. Indeed, the lowest price it has seen over the last 12 months is $66.82. Had this been a food contamination scare at a Macdonald’s restaurant, I’d lay a lot on the share price falling far more dramatically.

By the end of March, ANA alone will have cancelled nearly 1,900 flights affecting more than 126,000 passengers. Even using google, it’s hard to get a handle on the number of cancellations of the other airlines involved. We know that United is using other aircraft till June and LOT will continue using its gas guzzling 767s till October. LOT has also announced it is losing $50,000 each day its Dreamliners are grounded.

Just two days ago, Qantas announced it had received $125 million from Boeing in compensation for Dreamliner delivery delays. How much is going out to other carriers?
 

 

Analysts estimate the world's largest planemaker is missing out on about $200 million in delivery payments every month that the 787 remains grounded, while spending as much as $1 billion a month to keep its 787 production line running.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-02-20/business/sns-rt-us-boeing-dreamliner-batterybre91j107-20130220_1_dreamliner-fleet-japan-s-gs-yuasa-japanese-battery-makers

Boeing met the FAA yesterday and presented a possible fix to the battery problems. One element appears to involve a covering the batteries with a containment box and widening the spacing between the cells.
 

 

. . . according to the Seattle Times, Boeing's local paper, machinists at its Auburn, Washington plant have been instructed to build high-strength containment boxes for the lithium-ion batteries . . .

Robert Mann, founder of airline consultant RW Mann, said the NTSB had yet to file its official preliminary report. "It's puzzling, really," he said. "What is Boeing trying to fix when we don't really know what went wrong yet?

"We will have to see whether the FAA thinks separating the cells more and throwing a big box around it is good enough," he added.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/22/boeing-dreamliner-787-battery-fix-faa
 

 

Ralph J. Brodd, a battery industry consultant in Henderson, Nev., said that if the F.A.A. approved the proposals, it should also require airlines to check the batteries after each flight.

“They’re going to have to be particularly vigilant for some time,” Dr. Brodd said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/business/faa-weighs-dreamliner-fixes-as-battery-flaw-remains-an-unknown.html?_r=0

[ceejay]

 

. . according to the Seattle Times, Boeing's local paper, machinists at its Auburn, Washington plant have been instructed to build high-strength containment boxes for the lithium-ion batteries

Am I being fussy, or is the idea of flying over the Pacific in a plane with components that require special containment in case they catch fire as deeply unattractive to all of you as it is to me?

[Guest fountainhall]

That has always been my view. But looking at the flyertalk site today I noticed a post which really made me think. As it points out, every aircraft has fires within its structure which are contained, and no-one makes a fuss about it. That's not to exonerate Boeing, but it does rather put the battery issue into some perspective.
 

 

those folks who think that simply having "fire" on their aircraft is a catastrophic occurrence should probably never fly again. There is fire onboard every commercial jet aircraft the entire time the engines and APU are running. That fire, however, is reliably and safely contained within the engines. Note also that turbine engines are routinely installed internally to aircraft as APUs, and in ships, power plants, ground vehicles, etc., so external mounting versus internal does not matter greatly as far as the hazard assessment.

Remember smoking flights 20+ years ago? There was a "fire" in the passenger cabin every time someone lit their cigarette. Again, the likelihood of something catastrophic happening with these numerous small fires was considered acceptable.

For the Lithium battery issue Boeing is evidently looking at a short term fix that mitigates the consequences of potential battery fires rather than reducing their likelihood. They apparently feel that containing any fire and venting the combustion products (as is done constantly with the jet engines and APUs on those same aircraft) is a potential mitigation for the hazard created by the battery.

Is there a meaningful difference in consequences between a 787 APU with jet fuel burning inside a reliable container with its exhaust venting to the atmosphere versus a battery burning inside a reliable container with its combustion products venting to the atmosphere? Granted the APU is operating as intended while the battery is failing, but the battery has redundant backups that mitigate the operational consequences. The key, of course, is validating a reliable container and exhaust system for the battery as Boeing appears to be attempting.

Longer term it appears that Boeing will likely implement an overall battery system redesign that will take many months if not years to implement fully. This might eliminate the need for a heavy fireproof container and vent system for the battery. However, given recent history the FAA might ultimately be unwilling to back away from that requirement in Lithium battery systems.

P.S. I don't work for the FAA, but I am involved in the aircraft design and certification field. I think that it is a shame that the FAA and other government agencies are gradually ceding much of their technical knowledge (and ultimately technical authority) to the commercial sector regarding design and certification of aircraft. Reading the "backstory" on how the battery systems for the 787 were approved for use in the context of the FAA's historical statistical standards is disturbing.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/united-mileageplus-consolidated/1428585-faa-grounds-uas-787-fleet-54.html

[Guest anonone]

Sorry, I don't buy that "just contain a battery fire" as a plausible solution...and the quote from flyertalk minimizes a rather important point. 

 

The batteries on the plane are there for a reason.  There is more at stake than just preventing the fire from spreading to other parts of the plane.  If the batteries are on fire, they are not providing power to the aircraft, which I am sure is designed to use that power....either as a primary or backup role. 

 

Airplane crashes happen because many things go wrong, not when one thing goes wrong.  I do not want to be on the plane with batteries on fire, venting into the atmosphere and "contained" in some type of device, as they will no longer be availabe for the role they are on board for....

 

the battery has redundant backups that mitigate the operational consequences

 

When I am ETOPS and 3 hours away from an airport....I do not want to already be defaulting to backup systems. 

[ceejay]

<p>Indeed. The article from Flyertalk is a glib dismissal of real risks. The author of it is welcome to fly the Dreamliner for as long as it takes to convinve me that it is safe to do so.</p>

<p>There are other issues he fails to address:</p>

<p>1) Engines burn huge amounts of fuel at high temperatures. It's what they are designed to do and the processes are well understood, making the design of a containment system reliable. Indeed, an engine is by definition a containment system - you can't convert the energy to useful work without containing and releasing it in a controlled way. This is a necessarty risk - you have to take it in order to fly.</p>

<p>2) There is a difference between necessary and unnecessary risk. Without an engine burning fuel, the plane would not fly. The plane does not need a battery that catches fire and should not fly with one. This is one of the reasons that smoking was banned in planes - as an unnecessary risk,.</p>

<p>3) How do you certify the containment system? Plainly, Boeing do not understand fully how these batteries work, and they certainly have yet to identify the cause of their failure. That being so, how do they predict the nature of the worst case failure? How can they demonstrate that the containment system is adequate to cope with an unknown?</p>

[Guest fountainhall]

Re that flyertalk post, as anonone and ceejay point out, the key issue missing in his argument is that engines are designed to burn and create thrust; batteries are designed to supply clean power, not go up in smoke.

 

The key worry, though, seems to be the history of these batteries. Leave aside for now the exploding laptops, cell phones and other consumer items. Leave aside the FAA tests where lithium batteries in pilots' laptops - increasingly used now in place of bulky maps and manuals - have ignited. The airline industry is now certain that

 

 

large shipments of power cells are suspected of having played a role in the fatal crashes of two jumbo jet cargo planes in 2010 and 2011 and the destruction of a smaller freighter in 2006, according to safety officials.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323968304578247830800960840.html

 

One aircraft involved was a UPS 747-400. 20 minutes into the flight from Dubai to Cologne, the US pilots reported radio problems and smoke in the cockpit. The aircraft crashed as it was trying to land back at Dubai. It is now known that lithium ion batteries caused the initial fire.

 

The second was an Asiana 747 off Jeju Island en route from Seoul to Shanghai. Traffic control officials claim the Asiana pilot called "fire"and "emergency" about ten minutes before the aircraft disappeared from the radar screens. Its cargo included electronic products, mobile phones, liquid crystal displays, LEDs,  lithium batteries and liquids. At that time the FAA said there had been 46 reported incidents of aircraft fires linked to cargo that included lithium-ion batteries

 

http://www.airportwatch.org.uk/?page_id=3259

 

That's the main reason Cathay Pacific and other airlines started imposing much tougher restrictions on passengers carrying lithium ion batteries for consumer products some time before the Dreamliner incidents.

[Guest fountainhall]

ANA has now announced the cancellation of all Dreamliner flights for April and May, adding 1,714 more flights to the 1,900 already cancelled. This will be a huge blow for the airline as May's Golden Week is when vast numbers of Japanese travel overseas. No doubt, JAL will announce a similar cancellation soon.

 

I'll bet the airline leasing companies are doing a roaring trade in providing replacement aircraft.

 

http://news.sky.com/story/1056514/dreamliner-grounded-until-at-least-end-of-may

[Guest thaiworthy]

FAA is not ready to approve 787 test flights:

 

Following reports that Boeing were about to begin 787 test flights the FAA has reacted quickly to deny this.

http://planefinder.net/about/news/faa-not-ready-to-approve-787-test-flights/
 

[Guest anonone]

Boeing, 787 Battery Supplier at Odds Over Fixes

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323293704578330480004073900.html

 

Really good article by Wall Street Journal.  You have to imagine that with Boeing and their battery supplier not presenting a unified approach, the FAA will be leary about moving forward.

 

GS Yuasa Corp.

has told the Federal Aviation Administration that while it supports

engineering and design changes Boeing has proposed to try to end the

six-week-old grounding of 787s, it believes the proposed package is

inadequate to mitigate all potential 787 battery hazards, the officials

said.

Yuasa's primary argument, according to the officials, was that its own

laboratory tests strongly suggest that an external power surge—or

another problem originating outside the eight cells of the

battery—kicked off the sequence of events on the 787s that experienced

burning batteries. Yuasa told the FAA that temperatures and current

fluctuations recorded on those planes weren't consistent with

short-circuits originating inside its batteries.As a result, Yuasa is urging the FAA to require installation of a

sophisticated voltage regulator intended to prevent current from flowing

into 787 batteries at the first sign of a problem. Boeing's package of

proposed battery enhancements doesn't add such a feature to existing

safeguards, people familiar with it say. Boeing is arguing that its

overall package—which includes sturdier and better separated cells and a

new fireproof container around the batteries—is adequate to prevent any

internal or external malfunctions from causing fire or smoke.

[KhorTose]

Great article thanks for posting, but I suspect the battery company has to say something since there are major cost already to Boeing and if it is the batteries fault they might have to pay. When you consider the degree of engineering that it takes to make a plane, I don't think Boeing is trying to slough this off, and I am willing to bet their solution will work.

[Guest fountainhall]

I dont normally post entire articles, but this op-ed piece in the Toronto Star goes into a few more details about the background to the way the Dreamliner was conceived and put together. It does not make for very pleasant reading - at least for Boeing and its customers.
 

 

The latest Boeing 787 Dreamliner problem — the planes were grounded after a battery fire on two Japanese airline flights — is just another blow to the airline industry but it is the one I and other potential passengers take most personally.

Air travel has become little more than a series of affronts to one’s dignity, so the idea of a fuel-conserving lighter plane that could fly longer distances with better interior air and bigger windows, look, it was a dream, get over it.

It does seem as though Boeing, which launched its dream scheme in 2004, hedged its bets, outsourcing the design, engineering and manufacture of the plane, as is the modern way. James Surowiecki, the New Yorker’s sturdy reliable economics reporter — no dreamer he — has traced Boeing’s disastrous decision to outsource most of the work to 50 different companies — yes, 50 — to the bad marriage Boeing made with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.

Essentially, he wrote, Boeing was the wild-eyed dreamer and McDonnell Douglas was Mr. Cautious, which meant that they compromised on a queen-sized bed, so to speak. They outsourced to such a degree that it was more trouble to keep track of the sub- and sub-sub-contractors than just to have done the thing in-house in the first place.

The timeline of the Dreamliner’s problems reads like a thriller plot — you may well say I am easily entertained — but it’s perhaps more of a Greek tragedy. Christopher Tang and Joshua Zimmerman’s crisply written ,UCLA study, Managing New Product Development and Supply Chain Risks: The Boeing 787 Case, reveals Boeing’s crush on outsourcing.

Normally firms gather parts from suppliers and build a product. Boeing devised a three-tier system of suppliers before the bits even reached it for assembly, the study says. The jigsaw map of the plane looks like something devised by the UN, the wing sections alone coming from six companies in four nations.

The initial rationale for planetwide sourcing sounded plausible. So did preventing delays by refusing to pay suppliers until the first 787 reached customers. But there were technical problems with things like the composite materials that replaced the aluminum normally used for planes. They made the plane wonderfully light but lightning strikes were initially a worry, the study reported.

Then came Boeing’s risk. Just-in-time delivery, that gift to the trucking industry and to Walmart, doesn’t work perfectly. Why would it? Humans don’t meet deadlines. Almost no managers were sufficiently gifted to track and discipline the vast supply chain, the study said. Boeing’s workforce, terrified of layoffs, went on strike. Customers began backing out.

I won’t recount what the study reported Boeing did to even out the risk because it starts to read like a history of the doomed 1910 Scott expedition to the South Pole. Boeing was calm and brave, buying up the weakest suppliers, hiring a new manager and CEO, giving staff a raise and edgy customers interim airplanes.

But discovering that lithium-ion batteries tend to overheat? That’s like Scott’s fatal decision to go with ponies instead of sled dogs.
There is a splendid 20/20 clarity in the study’s sad little sentence, “Boeing should have chosen the right people for the job at the outset.” Sometimes I think the secret of hiring is that people are either intelligent or they’re not, whatever the job is.

Surowiecki says exciting new products always have flaws and we should have expected trouble. He is wrong. It’s not that we have no tolerance for mistakes in airplanes, but that we have no tolerance for ending up in a fireball catapulting to earth.

Outsourcing the outsourced has a cost: it overstretches the link between parts and the final product. It’s a risk British consumers took when they bought cheap burgers made from meat outsourced all over Europe, which turned out to be horse, not beef. And now they’re retching.

Consumers paid a price in quality when they demanded cheap airfares. They worshipped the god of cheap and Boeing tried to please them.

The 787 delays, plus the new merger between American and US Airways, will mean higher U.S. domestic airfares and rightly so. We’ll fly less often but more happily.

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2013/02/25/outofcontrol_outsourcing_ruined_boeings_beautiful_dreamliner_mallick.html

 

The case study highlighted in the article can be found here - 

 

http://bus545-boeing.wikispaces.com/file/view/Boeing+787+Case.pdf

[Guest]

Yuasa's primary argument, according to the officials, was that its own laboratory tests strongly suggest that an external power surge—or another problem originating outside the eight cells of the battery—kicked off the sequence of events on the 787s that experienced burning batteries.

Yuasa have a large financial incentive to blame the problem on external factors, so they will be working flat out to reach such a conclusion.

[Guest anonone]

Interesting op piece, fountainhall.  I tend to think it goes a bit too far, but Boeing certainly took a risk with the role of suppliers on the 787.  And to z909's point, it creates situations where the 2 factions (Boeing and Yuasa) now have competing interests instead of a common resolution to pursue. 

 

We continue to go through the cycles where leaders are convinced that "outsourcing" (in whatever guise it tends to take now) is the magic that will provide a competitive advantage....Usually enabled by a healthy ego which convinces them the difficulties in implementing these types of strategies can be overcome by their brilliance. 

 

I tend to look at Boeing as the early adoptor for a lot of the 787's charecteristics.  I really believe they will become commonplace in future airplane models...and actually continue to be improved on.  With the scrutiny now in place, the "fix" will probably be at an "overkill" level before the FAA is satisfied.  They are not going to put their ass on the line. 

[KhorTose]

I have kept a hope alive that Boeing's stock would drop below $70.00 a share, but the market hasn't moved at all in that direction. Hardly lost more then a dollar through this whole thing So much for my plans to get Boeing cheaply. I suspect that this indicator is probably the one thing that you can be sure of. This is a good plane and will make a lot of money for Boeing. As a Seattleite (SPELLING), I agree 100% with Anonone.

Phil Condit the fired (he was) CEO of Boeing came up with this idea of parting all the construction out, and this dumb idea has been the root cause of both the delays and other problems Boeing has had with this plane. Can you imagine they sent critical parts of this plane to be built in Naples. Anyone who knows Naples, the work force, and the area could have told them how insane that was. Beautiful city where nothing gets done, and the elected officals are not running the town. Damn, now I have to start checking for a horse's head in my bed.

[Guest fountainhall]

Last night it ended at $76.90! I'm sure the Dreamliner will make gazillions in the long run. In the short to medium term, though, the massive penalty payments it will have to pay out not only to the existing operators but to all the airlines whose aircraft are now seriously delayed, alongside receiving zero income from new deliveries, has to be - absolutely has to be - a monstrous drain on the company's cash. If the cause and the fix are not found for a few more months and then the FAA requires yet another few months for re-certification, how much cash will Boeing have haemorrhaged? My guess is that the share price has to start dropping relatively soon.

[Guest]

Stocks are in fashion, so global markets are up.  The view of the herd seems to have more influence than the outlook for the company.

[KhorTose]

In the meantime Boeing's bottom line is looking very good according to the Wall Street Journal. 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304811304577365584279346076.html

[Guest fountainhall]

And the share price went up again last night! We all know that the 737 and its many variants are cash cows for the company, as must be its defence aircraft. But I still reckon the share price will start to drop sooner rather than later.

[ceejay]

To forecast the impact of the 787 problems on Boeing's profitability, you really need to take a close look at the balance sheet. The current bottom line is not that informative by itself.

They will have made provisions for contigencies on the project - in effect deferring current real profits to cover future possible losses. Large companies, especially in high tech industries, will have whole teams of accountants looking for legitimate provisions and probably negotiating them with the tax authorities too. That's because, since a provision is effectively accounting for a loss, the cash allocated to it is not taxed (that is a massive oversimplification, but the principle holds).

So, if the costs are covered by adequate provsions, they have no impact on current profitability at all. The loss has already been accounted for.

Cash flow is another issue, because they need real money to pay compensation claims. The real pressure is on liquid assets and this may result in an increased borrowing requirement. That does have an effect on profitability.

Don't forget though that a company like Boeing has a business providing maintenance, spares and service for existing aircraft that are already in use. That's going to be an excellent business - assured revenues for decades with little in the way of development costs. (In fact, if you look at the accounts of some high tech capital equipment companies, they are effectively service organisations that supply capital equipment as a loss leader to ensure the business stream for their service activities)

[Guest]

Nice bit of analysis Ceejay -thank you.

I do OK running my share portfolio as it is, but probably could do a lot better with the kind of accounting know how explained in your post. 

Even the cash flow should have some effect on the share price, if the current situation drags on.

[Guest anonone]

Some major 787 news of late. 

 

First, a big New York Times article, mostly about the National Transportation Safety Board's activities.  A lot of detail about the Boston incident

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/business/safety-board-reports-little-progress-in-787-inquiry.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

The new details about the fire were in a preliminary report that indicates the board has still not made much progress in figuring out why a battery in the new Boeing 787 jet parked at the airport burst into flame on Jan. 7.

 

Other managers reported smoke in the nearly empty passenger cabin that was “intense” and “caustic smelling” before summoning firefighters, who found “a white glow with radiant heat waves” coming from the battery, the report said.

The battery was also hissing loudly and leaking liquids and seemed to be reigniting. Standard fire suppressants had little effect, the report said, and a fire captain’s neck was burned, he said, when the battery “exploded.”  The new details about the fire were in a preliminary report that indicates the board has still not made much progress in figuring out why a battery in the new Boeing 787 jet parked at the airport burst into flame on Jan. 7.

Over the last two weeks, Boeing has told the government that it had identified the most likely ways in which the batteries could fail, and it proposed several fixes. Boeing contends that the changes would minimize the odds of incidents and protect the plane and its passengers if a problem did arise. The safety board released its report a day after federal officials said that the Federal Aviation Administration was close to approving tests of Boeing’s approach to fixing the batteries on its 787 jets, and the tests could begin next week.

The federal approvals are expected late this week or early next week, though some battery specialists remain concerned that investigators have not found the precise cause of two incidents in which the jetliner’s new lithium-ion batteries emitted smoke or fire.

 

The safety board is also looking into how the F.A.A. certified the batteries as safe in 2007 when Boeing’s design and testing and its adherence to required special precautions were clearly deficient.

Ms. Hersman, the safety board chairwoman, said last month that Boeing’s original tests showed no indication the batteries could erupt in flame and concluded that they were likely to emit smoke less than once in every 10 million flight hours.

Once the planes were placed in service, though, the batteries overheated and emitted smoke twice, and caused one fire, after about 50,000 hours of commercial flights.

 

Interesting to see the paths of the two US Federal agencies (FAA and NTSB) as they investigate the dreamliner. 

 

Next, some revelations from the Japanese Aviation Union.

 

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020496541_787japancircuitsxml.html

 

Japanese aerospace union officials cast new light on problems with the 787’s power distribution panels Wednesday, saying one malfunction last year caused a burned circuit board and disclosing two other previously unpublicized incidents. 

Power panel faults, while unrelated to the battery problems that have grounded the 787 since mid-January, are another nagging issue with the plane’s innovative electrical system.

On flights in March, April and June of last year, faults in power-panel circuit boards on Dreamliners operated by Japanese carrier All Nippon Airways (ANA) resulted in error messages in the cockpit, said airline spokeswoman Nao Gunji.

Each time, the panels were inspected after landing. In the case of the fault on an April 7 flight, a circuit board was found to have shorted, causing “slight discoloration” from burning, Gunji said.

Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said Wednesday the investigation of the power-panel incidents is still ongoing.

Following the ANA power panel faults, on Dec. 4, another power-panel short circuit occurred on a United flight out of Houston, forcing the pilot to divert to New Orleans.

A few days later, a similar fault occurred on the delivery flight of a Qatar Airways 787 from Everett to Doha.

And later in December, a second United jet was grounded after another power-panel malfunction.

Kazuo Harigai, assistant secretary of the Japanese union federation, told Bloomberg News that “there have been lots of problems with the (787) electrical system.”

Gunji said the purpose of the press conference was to ask the government “to ensure the safety of the aircraft” and take the time to find out what happened.

 

 

Finally, an interesting snippet regarding EADS (Parent company of Airbus)

 

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/1258576/1/.html

 

Boeing's recent problems with the 787 Dreamliner aircraft have likely left regulators "a little bit nervous" about approving other planes, the chief executive of EADS said Thursday.

"I think the certification authorities, whether it's the FAA or any other, are probably a little bit nervous about these new planes now coming in, about the materials and the systems and the processes," said EADS chief executive Tom Enders.

EADS's plane-making unit Airbus is at the early stage of the Federal Aviation Administration certification process of its A-350 aircraft, which, like the Dreamliner, boasts lighter weight and better fuel-efficiency.

"If industry runs into trouble, particularly as certification is concerned, that affects not just one manufacturer, but others as well," Enders said.

Enders said that the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company had not gained business due to Boeing's problems with the 787 Dreamliner.

[KhorTose]

I should have bought Boeing stock at $74 as it is now $81.