Japan Airlines Co (JAL) on Sunday said that a Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner jet undergoing checks in Tokyo following a fuel leak at a Boston airport last week had leaked fuel during tests earlier in the day.
An open valve on the aircraft caused fuel to leak from a nozzle on the left wing used to remove fuel, a company spokeswoman said. The jet is out of service after spilling about 150 liters of fuel onto the airport taxiway in Boston due to a separate valve-related problem.
In Boston, a different valve on the plane opened, causing fuel to flow from the center tank to the left main tank. When that tank filled up, it overflowed into a surge tank and out through a vent. The spill happened as the plane was taxiing for takeoff on a flight to Tokyo on Tuesday last week. It made the flight about four hours later.
The causes of both incidents are unknown, the JAL spokeswoman added. There is no timetable for the plane to return to service.
“We are aware of the event and are working with our customer,” Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said of the leak in Tokyo.
On Friday, the US government ordered a wide-ranging review of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, citing concern over a battery that caught fire on Jan. 7 on a JAL plane in Boston and other problems. The US government and Boeing insisted the passenger jet remained safe to fly.
The eight airlines that operate the 50 Dreamliners delivered so far have expressed support for it, saying the mishaps are teething problems common with most new airplanes and that the 787’s fuel savings make it an important addition to their fleets. JAL and local rival All Nippon Airways Co fly 24 Dreamliners.
The review follows a slew of incidents that have focused intense scrutiny on the new plane. Last month, a 787 operated by United Airlines was forced to land in New Orleans, Mississippi, after a warning light in the cockpit indicated a generator had failed.
Boeing later said a faulty circuit board produced in Mexico and supplied by UTC Aerospace Systems, a unit of United Technologies, had produced a false reading in the cockpit. A UTC Aerospace spokesman declined to comment.
Also last month, two other 787s suffered problems with electrical panels. On Dec. 5, US regulators said there was a manufacturing fault in 787 fuel lines and advised operators to make extra inspections to guard against engine failures. A week ago, the plane had seven reported incidents, ranging from the fire to a cracked cockpit window.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts