Boeing 787 test flights stopped after emergency landing in Texas
| Dallas
Boeing has stopped test flights of its new 787 passenger jet while it determines what caused smoke in the cabin and forced one of the planes to make an emergency landing.
Boeing Co. shares fell $2.01, or 2.9 percent, to $67.24 in trading Wednesday morning, making Boeing the worst performer in the Dow Jones industrial average.
On Tuesday, a 787 on a 6-hour test flight had to make an emergency landing in Texas after the crew reported smoke in the rear of the plane.
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Boeing spokeswoman Loretta Gunter said Wednesday the company will ground its fleet of test planes while technicians analyze data from the stricken plane to pinpoint the cause of the smoke.
The technicians will take "as much time as they need," Gunter said, but she held out hope test flights could resume as early as Wednesday if the problem is quickly identified. The Federal Aviation Administration is also investigating the incident.
This marks the latest setback for a plane that is already running about three years behind schedule. Boeing had hoped to deliver the first 787, which it calls the Dreamliner, to Japan's All Nippon Airways in the first quarter of next year.
Tuesday's test plane took off from Yuma, Ariz., and flew a horseshoe-shaped route north to Montana, then east, then south to Texas. The pilot declared an emergency and landed the plane at an airport in Laredo, Texas, along the Mexico border.
According to Boeing, 42 people were aboard, including the crew and technicians who were performing a test to check the efficiency of a system used to pump nitrogen gas to the fuel tanks to reduce the risk that fuel vapors could catch fire.
Boeing said one person suffered minor injuries when the crew slid down emergency exit chutes.
Gunter said the pilot never lost primary flight displays during the incident, as some news organizations had reported Tuesday. She said information from the plane was sent for analysis in Seattle, where Boeing's commercial aircraft division is based.
