Boeing spent much of the first half of last year battling problems with its 787 Dreamliner airplane - battery problems led to a number of fires, which led the plane to be grounded entirely in the US and Japan for months while the company worked on a fix. Unfortunately for Boeing, the 787's battery is back in the headlines today. Maintenance workers at Japan's Narita airport noticed smoke and an unidentified liquid coming from a 787's main battery two hours before the plane was scheduled to take off. According to Reuters, alarms in the cockpit confirmed there was an issue with the battery's power pack and charger.

Boeing is claiming that wha …

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Boeing's 787 Dreamliner has hit its latest problem - Japanese airline ANA says that three of its 20-strong fleet have shown an electrical wiring issue with their engine fire extinguishers. An airline spokesperson told Reuters that the discovery was first made during pre-flight maintenance in Tokyo.

787 bound for Helsinki forced to turn back

It's not yet known whether the fault could stop the extinguishers working in the event of a fire, but Japan Airlines, a competitor of ANA, said it forced a 787 bound for Helsinki to turn back for examination. The airline says it is currently performing similar checks on its fleet of ten Dreamliners.

The …

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The fire that caused significant damage to an Ethiopian Airlines 787 Dreamliner sitting on the tarmac of London's Heathrow airport last week is now officially being blamed by British authorities on batteries - but not the same ones that led to the 787's months-long grounding earlier this year. This time, the focus is on an emergency locator transmitter (ELT) manufactured by Honeywell, which uses lithium-manganese batteries and sits in the upper rear portion of the aircraft's fuselage.

ELTs, found on commercial and private aircraft around the world, are designed to emit a signal that can help locate a downed aircraft after a crash. The speci …

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Another Boeing 787 Dreamliner caught fire yesterday, but reports indicate that unlike previous outbreaks the latest incident is unrelated to the aircraft's lithium-ion battery design. Though the fire's actual cause is still unknown, the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch said on Saturday that there was no evidence that the aircraft's battery had been the source of the fire. A full investigation is expected to take several days.

The 787 had been idle on the ground for eight hours at the time of the fire, and its batteries were not believed to have been in use. According to The New York Times, no injuries or significant damage occurred a …

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After months of investigation and repairs, it appears Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner is having troubles again. Both runways at London's Heathrow airport were shut down this evening local time after a fire broke out on a passenger jet. A statement from the airport provided to the BBC says that "the aircraft was parked on a remote parking stand" and adds that "there were no passengers on board and there are no reported injuries at this time." The plane in question is a 787 run by Ethiopian Airlines. Boeing has released an official statement on Twitter confirming the events, and it says it has personnel at the airport and is "working to fully unde …

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A scheduled United flight to Denver on Sunday needed to return to its originating airport, Houston's George Bush Intercontinental, after a cockpit indicator suggested a possible problem with the aircraft's brakes. Such issues happen dozens of times per month around the world, but this particular incident is getting extra scrutiny due to the type of aircraft involved: Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, which has gotten off to a rocky start since its 2011 launch with Japanese carrier ANA.

In the month of June 2013 alone, a look through The Aviation Herald's database suggests that aircraft operating for major airlines globally have suffered roughly 60 r …

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Boeing's 787 Dreamliner airplane has officially returned to the skies in the US following an embarrassing and costly battery problem that grounded the company's flagship plane for most of 2013. United Airlines flight 1 left Houston on time just after 11:00AM CT and is scheduled to land in Chicago at 1:35PM CT. Hopefully for Boeing, this will be the end of the 787's problems - the FAA lifted the 787 flight ban near the end of April after approving Boeing's battery redesigns. At the time, Boeing said that the $2.8 million repairs to United's six 787s would be complete by mid-May, so it looks like everything has gone according to plan so far. W …

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Boeing's 787 Dreamliner has made its first commercial flight since the entire fleet was grounded this past January following two separate incidents involving the lithium-ion batteries equipped on the planes. Ethiopian Airlines flight 801, which departed Addis Ababa at 9:45AM local time and arrived in Nairobi at 12:38PM, made the trip without incident. The 787 used for the trip is one of four in the airline's fleet, and it is the first that has successfully been retrofitted with the battery system approved by the FAA last week. According to the AFP, Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told reporters that work is underway to apply the b …

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Japan's transportation minster has announced that the country will allow the troubled 787 Dreamliner airplane to return to the skies once Boeing deploys its battery modifications, reports the Associated Press. This comes one day after the US Federal Aviation Administration gave a similar all-clear order to the 787, though the fix won't be completely deployed in Japan until June. "We have reached a conclusion that there is no problem with the judgment by the FAA," said Japanese transportation minister Akihiro Ohta. "We believe all possible safety measures would be taken to prevent recurrence of similar problems."

Japan, which is home to near …

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