The Japan Transportation Safety Board has rapid-fire found and diagnosed a surprise second battery problem on the All Nippon Airways Dreamliner that made an emergency landing on January 16th. (The report in Japanese along with diagrams and photos can be found here.)
Yesterday it said two out of the 8 cells in the aft battery had "deformations or slight swelling of the stainless cases" based on scan images examined by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
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| The NTSB examines the JAL battery |
Remember it was smoke in the forward battery in the E&E bay that prompted pilots to divert to Takamatsu. Associated Press is reporting that improper wiring of the battery to the APU caused the overheating damage. (Whack-a-Mole anyone?)
When, oh when, will Boeing executives wake up from the never-ending nightmare that is the Dreamliner? I am imagining them with their hands over their ears repeating loudly to themselves, "nah nah nah nah nah nah..." just to drown out the latest news.
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| Kazunori Ozawa speaks to Japan television |
Over the weekend, my man in Tokyo, Takeo Aizawa, pointed me to a televised interview that aired in Japan with Kazunori Ozawa, formerly the product leader at Sony when the electronics company was creating the cobalt oxide formulation of lithium ion battery twenty years ago.
In his interview Mr. Ozawa said he'd experienced a short-circuit fire when transporting batteries on a truck. He attributed the fire to the battery's vulnerability to vibration and wondered if this shortcoming could be relevant to problems with the battery in aviation.
It is worth noting that Mr. Ozawa has his own battery technology company now producing a manganese-flavored lithium product he claims is less susceptible to over charging, over discharging or exploding.
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| Graphic courtesy Matt Cawby |
So what do we have? Planes that cannot fly, batteries that cannot be relied on to work without huffin' and puffin' and an airplane manufacturer that is producing bad news, except when it is producing its own we-control-the-message news for its website.
Aviation Week's Guy Norris is reporting today that Boeing will be approaching the Federal Aviation Administration with a planned temporary fix for the battery problem to at least get the airplanes flying while a more permanent solution can be found.
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| Dreamliners in Everett, photo courtesy Mary Kirby |
Where oh where will it end? Shucks, I can't say, but Aboulafia's predicting a six to nine month grounding. That's 182 to 273 sleepless nights.