BREAKING: JAL is to ground its fleet of 787 Dreamliners as well according to AFP.
Well, its finally happened – the first airline who had 787’s delivered have grounded their 787 fleet pending safety inspections.
According to Reuters and BBC News, All Nippon Airways flight NH692 operating from Yamaguchi Ube to Tokyo’s Haneda made an emergency landing at Takamatsu after a battery malfunction.
The flight left Yamaguchi Ube at 08:10 local time (23:10 GMT) and was forced to land at 08:47 at Takamatsu airport – some 37 minutes later.
ANA said that there was an error message in the cockpit citing a battery malfunction, but will not confirm or deny reports that there was smoke in the cockpit or in the cabin. Upon landing, the emergency slides were deployed, and all 129 passengers and 8 crew evacuated the plane successfully.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner has had a spate of issues of the past few days as the critical safety eyes pass over it, with a lot of attention turning to the lithium ion battery packs that start the Auxiliary Power Unit up. Last week, the US FAA has launched a review into the design and assembly of the 787 during manufacturing. Yesterday, the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau has also launched its own probe after two successive fuel leaks on a different 787 operated by Japan Airlines.
For those of you expecting to be flying ANA’s 787 on Intercontinental or Domestic routes, expect cancellations, re-routings or delays as the ANA has to adjust the knock-on of the temporary loss of 17 aircraft removed from its fleet. Similarly, for those of you expecting to travel on JAL’s 787, expect disruption.
Out of the 50 787-8 aircraft operation, ANA and JAL operate 24 of the type.
Update 02:41GMT.