Japan’s two biggest airlines replaced below-par lithium-ion batteries on their Boeing Co 787 Dreamliners in the months before separate incidents led to the technologically advanced aircraft being grounded worldwide due to battery problems.
Comments from both All Nippon Airways (ANA), the new Boeing jetliner’s biggest customer to date, and Japan Airlines Co (JAL) point to reliability issues with the batteries long before a battery caught fire on a JAL 787 at Boston’s airport and a second battery was badly charred and melted on an ANA domestic flight that was forced into an emergency landing.
LOW CHARGES
ANA said it changed 10 batteries on its 787s last year, but did not inform accident investigators in the US because the incidents, including five batteries that had unusually low charges, did not compromise the plane’s safety, spokesman Ryosei Nomura said yesterday.
JAL also replaced batteries on the 787 “on a few occasions,” spokeswoman Sze Hunn Yap said, declining to be more specific on when units were replaced or whether these were reported to authorities.
However, ANA did inform Boeing of the faults that began in May and returned the batteries to their manufacturer, GS Yuasa Corp. A spokesman for the battery maker declined to comment yesterday. Shares of the company fell 1.2 percent.
Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said the airplane maker could not comment as the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has indicated this is now part of its investigation.
The New York Times earlier quoted an NTSB spokeswoman as saying the agency would include these “numerous issues” with the 787 battery in its investigations.
DETAILED INSPECTIONS
Under aviation inspection rules, airlines are required to perform detailed battery inspections once every two years.
Officials are carrying out detailed tests on the batteries, chargers and monitoring units in Japan and the US, but have so far made little headway in finding out what caused the battery failures.
Japan’s transport ministry said the manufacturing process at the company that makes the 787 battery’s monitoring unit did not appear to be linked to the problem on the ANA Dreamliner that made the emergency landing.
The NTSB said on Tuesday it was carrying out a microscopic investigation of the JAL 787 battery. Neither it nor the Japan Transport Safety Board has been able to say when they are likely to complete their work.
GROUNDED
The global fleet of 50 Dreamliners — 17 of which are operated by ANA — remain grounded, increasing the likely financial impact to Boeing, which is still producing the aircraft, but has stopped delivering them, and the airlines that fly the Dreamliner.
ISSUES: Gogoro has been struggling with ballooning losses and was recently embroiled in alleged subsidy fraud, using Chinese-made components instead of locally made parts Gogoro Inc (睿能創意), the nation’s biggest electric scooter maker, yesterday said that its chairman and CEO Horace Luke (陸學森) has resigned amid chronic losses and probes into the company’s alleged involvement in subsidy fraud. The board of directors nominated Reuntex Group (潤泰集團) general counsel Tamon Tseng (曾夢達) as the company’s new chairman, Gogoro said in a statement. Ruentex is Gogoro’s biggest stakeholder. Gogoro Taiwan general manager Henry Chiang (姜家煒) is to serve as acting CEO during the interim period, the statement said. Luke’s departure came as a bombshell yesterday. As a company founder, he has played a key role in pushing for the
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
EUROPE ON HOLD: Among a flurry of announcements, Intel said it would postpone new factories in Germany and Poland, but remains committed to its US expansion Intel Corp chief executive officer Pat Gelsinger has landed Amazon.com Inc’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a customer for the company’s manufacturing business, potentially bringing work to new plants under construction in the US and boosting his efforts to turn around the embattled chipmaker. Intel and AWS are to coinvest in a custom semiconductor for artificial intelligence computing — what is known as a fabric chip — in a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar framework,” Intel said in a statement on Monday. The work would rely on Intel’s 18A process, an advanced chipmaking technology. Intel shares rose more than 8 percent in late trading after the
GLOBAL ECONOMY: Policymakers have a choice of a small 25 basis-point cut or a bold cut of 50 basis points, which would help the labor market, but might reignite inflation The US Federal Reserve is gearing up to announce its first interest rate cut in more than four years on Wednesday, with policymakers expected to debate how big a move to make less than two months before the US presidential election. Senior officials at the US central bank including Fed Chairman Jerome Powell have in recent weeks indicated that a rate cut is coming this month, as inflation eases toward the bank’s long-term target of two percent, and the labor market continues to cool. The Fed, which has a dual mandate from the US Congress to act independently to ensure