Boeing Co’s 787 Dreamliner jet suffered a cracked cockpit window and an oil leak on separate flights in Japan yesterday — the latest in a series of incidents to test confidence in the sophisticated new aircraft.
All Nippon Airways Co (ANA) said a domestic flight from Tokyo landed safely at Matsuyama Airport in western Japan after a crack developed on the cockpit windscreen, and the plane’s return to Tokyo was canceled.
The same airline later said oil was found leaking from an engine of a 787 Dreamliner after the plane landed at Miyazaki Airport in southern Japan. An airline spokeswoman said that return flight to Tokyo International Airport (Haneda airport) was also canceled while the leak was investigated. No one was injured in either incident.
Photo: Reuters
The Dreamliner, the world’s first carbon-composite airliner, which has a list price of US$207 million, has been beset by problems this week.
US transportation officials were scheduled hold a press conference in Washington yesterday morning to discuss issues related to recent electrical problems on the new plane, one person familiar with the matter said.
Bloomberg News said the US Federal Aviation Administration would announce a review into the jet’s power system at that news conference. US regulators have raised questions about the plane’s reliability on long transocean routes, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The 787 Dreamliner made its first commercial flight in late 2011, after a series of production delays put deliveries more than three years behind schedule. By the end of last year, Boeing had sold 848 Dreamliners, and delivered 49.
Earlier this week, a battery fire caused damage to an empty 787 jet operated by Japan Airlines while it was on the ground at Boston Logan International Airport. The next day, another JAL 787 spilled 151 liters of fuel onto the taxiway at the same airport after a problem that caused a valve to open, forcing the plane to delay its departure. On Wednesday, ANA cancelled a domestic Dreamliner flight due to a brake-control computer glitch.
Boeing’s top Dreamliner engineer, Mike Sinnett, was rolled out midweek to defend the 787, saying the plane’s problem rates were no higher than with Boeing’s successful 777 jet.
The latest incidents came just hours before ANA was due to launch its maiden service between Tokyo and San Jose, California, with the Dreamliner. That flight was due to leave Tokyo and then return to Japan after about a 90-minute turnaround in the US.
ANA and JAL together fly 24 of the 49 Dreamliners delivered to the end of last month.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained