Boeing 787 ‘safe to fly’, says engineer after fire, fuel leak

BOEINGCo rolled out the Dreamliner’s chief engineer to try to quell concerns about the new jet following three mishaps in as many days, including an electrical fire that caused severe damage to a plane.

At a news conference on Wednesday, the engineer, Mike Sinnett, defended the 787, and said its problem rates were at about the same level as Boeing’s successful 777 jet. Relatively few technical problems prevent 787s from leaving a gate within 15 minutes of scheduled departure time, he said. “We’re in the high 90 percents,” he said. “We’re right where the 777 pro- gramme was” at this stage. The prevalence of more significant issues, such as a battery fire, was in the same order of magnitude as previous programmes, he added. “There’s no metrics that are screaming at me that we’ve got a problem.”

Sinnett explained in detail how the lithium-ion battery system that burned on Monday was designed to be safe and prevent smoke getting into the cabin in the event of a fire during a flight. “I am 100 percent convinced that the airplane is safe to fly,” he said. Asked why smoke entered the cabin, Sinnett said the plane lacked cabin pressure to expel smoke because it was on the ground. In that scenario, “We expect there would be sufficient time to evacuate the plane safely,” Sinnett said.

The battery fire in the empty Japan Airlines plane occurred in Boston on Monday. That was followed by a fuel leak on another JAL 787 on Tuesday, and by brake problems on an All Nippon Airways 787 that forced the airline to cancel the flight on Wednesday.

The US Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are looking into what caused the fire. – Reuters