Skip to footer

787 completes first test flight since grounding

Boeing 787 Dreamliner makes 'uneventful' two-hour test flight to gather data on its lithium-ion batteries. A series of battery-related problems have grounded the 787 Dreamliners as officials investigate. 

|
Elaine Thompson/AP
A Boeing 787 jet taxis Thursday in view of a line of parked 787's at Paine Field in Everett, Wash., following a flight from Texas. On Saturday, Boeing scheduled its first test flight of the Dreamliner since the fleet of 50 was grounded last month after a series of battery problems
  • By Reuters

| CHICAGO

Boeing Co completed what it called an uneventful flight on Saturday of a test 787 Dreamliner, its first since the airplanes were grounded more than three weeks ago after a series of battery-related problems.

The test flight to gather detailed information on the airplane's lithium-ion batteries lasted two hours and 19 minutes, taking off from and returning to Boeing Field in Seattle, Boeing said.

"The crew reports that the flight was uneventful," Boeing said in a statement.

The 50 Dreamliners in commercial service were grounded worldwide on Jan. 16 after a series of battery-related incidents including a fire on board a parked 787 at Boston's Logan International Airport and an in-flight problem on another airplane in Japan.

The groundings have cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, with no solution yet in sight.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Thursday it would allow 787 test flights, under more stringent rules, to monitor the batteries in flight.

Boeing said the information gathered during the flight was part of the investigations into the battery events that occurred in January and that additional details could not be shared.

The airplane is Boeing's fifth 787 flight test airplane, marked as ZA005, and the only member of the test fleet in service. The flight had a crew of 13, including pilots and testing personnel, Boeing said.

Boeing said no flights of the airplane were planned on Sunday, but it planned to resume flights early in the coming week. Boeing does not provide advance flight schedules.

The test flight departed Boeing Field at 12:32 p.m. Pacific time (3:32 p.m. ET/2032 GMT) and landed at 2:51 p.m. (5:51 p.m. ET/2251 GMT), the company said.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 787 completes first test flight since grounding
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0210/787-completes-first-test-flight-since-grounding
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe