Trouble besets 2 787 jets in a day

One catches fire; glitch halts a 2nd

Saturday, July 13, 2013

London’s Heathrow airport suspended flights Friday after a fire aboard a Boeing Co. 787 jet operated by Ethiopian Airlines Enterprise, while a second Dreamliner with technical problems was forced to abandon a trip. Shares of the U.S. plane-maker had their biggest drop in almost two years.

The aircraft, Boeing’s newest model and beset by battery-related fire incidents that grounded the global fleet earlier this year, was sprayed with fire-retardant foam after the Heathrow event. No one was on board and there were no injuries.

Takeoffs and landings were suspended at Europe’s busiest hub for about an hour while emergency services attended to the jet, before flights resumed later with significant delays. The cause of the fire is unknown, Heathrow Ltd. said on its Twitter feed, with television pictures appearing to show damage on the rear upper fuselage close to the aircraft’s tail.

“We’re aware of the 787 event at Heathrow airport and have Boeing personnel there,” the Chicago-based company said on Twitter, adding that it had sent people to the scene. “We’re working to fully understand and address this.”

Ethiopian Airlines said the aircraft had been parked at Heathrow for more than eight hours before smoke was detected. “The cause of the incident is under investigation by all concerned,” Henok Teferra, a spokesman for the carrier, said in a text message.

TUI Travel Plc’s U.K. charter arm Thomson Airways Ltd. said that one of its two 787s turned back to Manchester in northern England Friday after the detection of an unspecified fault after it had departed for Orlando Sanford airport in Florida.

Passengers disembarked without further incident and engineering teams are investigating the issue, said spokesman Andy Cockburn.

Shares of Boeing fell $5.01,or 4.7 percent, to close Friday at $101.87.

Heathrow said the internal fire was detected while the aircraft was stationary and that it wasn’t subsequently moved. The Ethiopian Airlines website showed a service was due to depart London at 9 p.m. for an eight hour trip to Addis Ababa, though the Flightstats.com website showed the flight as cancelled.

Boeing’s all-composite Dreamliner returned to service in May after being grounded on Jan. 16 after malfunctions with its lithium-ion batteries.

It was allowed to resume flights after a redesign added more protection around individual cells to contain any overheating, a steel case to prevent fire and a tube that would vent any fumes outside the fuselage.

The twin-engine 787 model has won almost 1,000 orders from airlines keen to cut their fuel bills, with Ethiopian one of its earliest buyers. Sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest carrier currently has four of 10 Dreamliners on order in service.

The U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch said it’s making enquiries regarding the Heathrow incident and hasn’t yet decided whether to send a team to the scene, a spokesman said.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating a Jan. 7 battery fire aboard a Japan Airlines Co. 787, plans to send a representative to work with British authorities, spokesman Terry Williams said.

The body can participate in investigations in other jurisdictions if the aircraft or its systems were manufactured in the U.S.

Information for this article was contributed by Julie Johnsson, Alan Levin and William Davison of Bloomberg News.

Business, Pages 27 on 07/13/2013