Japan’s two biggest airlines said yesterday they had begun replacing the powerpacks on their troubled Dreamliner aircraft after US aviation authorities approved Boeing’s battery fix proposal.
All Nippon Airways (ANA), the next-generation aircraft’s biggest operator, started installing the new battery system into five of its 17 Dreamliner planes at a handful of Japanese airports, a company spokesman said.
The replacement could take as long as two months, with the carrier eyeing a resumption of flights in June, he said.
Photo: Reuters
Japan Airlines (JAL) also began replacement procedures for two of its seven Dreamliners at Haneda and Narita airports in Tokyo yesterday.
“We began the work as we have received instructions from Boeing following the [Federal Aviation Administration] FAA’s approval,” a company spokesman said.
“But we have not decided on the timing of 787 flight resumption,” with final approval to be given by Japanese regulators, the spokesman said.
On Friday, the US Federal Aviation Administration approved Boeing’s proposed battery fix for its 787 Dreamliner aircraft, a key step toward getting the grounded jetliner back in the skies.
Airlines will receive instructions on how to implement the fix of the problematic lithium-ion batteries that overheated, prompting the worldwide grounding of the 787 in mid-January, the FAA said.
Last week, a Japanese newspaper reported that Tokyo planned to impose additional safety requirements on its airlines before they are allowed to resume flying the Dreamliner.
The grounding of the 50 Dreamliners in service came after a battery fire on a parked JAL 787 at Boston’s Logan International Airport and an incident in which fumes from a battery forced the emergency landing of an ANA-operated plane in Japan.
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