Embraer and its privately held partner, Sierra Nevada, beat out U.S.-based Hawker Beechcraft for the $428 million deal, the Brazilian planemaker’s first with the U.S. armed forces.

With the “seal of quality” from the world’s biggest defense spender, the head of Embraer’s defense unit Carlos Aguiar said he anticipated more demand for the single-engine turboprop Super Tucano from potential clients in the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

“We know other countries were waiting for the result,” Aguiar said in a telephone interview. “With the United States itself, as we show we can deliver on the contract, this order can definitely grow and there will be other needs we can meet.”

The contract was also good news for Chicago-based Boeing Co (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which is bidding to overhaul Brazil’s Air Force with more than 36 new fighter jets worth at least $4 billion, in a closely watched race against France’s Dassault Aviation (AVMD.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Sweden’s Saab (SAABb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

“This is obviously a very good development for Boeing. It’s the best thing that’s happened to them in months (in the fighter jet race),” said a senior Brazilian official on condition of anonymity. The official did not elaborate.

Brazilian officials had expressed dismay last year, when the U.S. scrapped the Afghan contract originally awarded to Embraer in December 2011. Hawker challenged that process in court and political fallout from the Kansas-based company losing out to a Brazilian one seeped into the U.S. presidential campaign.

After Embraer clinched the rebid on Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter called Brazil’s Defense Minister Celso Amorim to congratulate him on the results.

Amorim called it a “big victory” for Brazilian industry that will open new business opportunities for Embraer, according to a statement from the ministry.

For Hawker, which emerged from a Chapter 11 restructuring this month, the lost contract is another setback on the road to recovery.

“We will meet with the (U.S. Air Force) for a full debrief of the award and determine our next steps forward at that time,” Nicole Alexander, a company spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement.

(Additional reporting by Brian Winter; Editing by Carol Bishopric and David Gregorio)

Embraer and its U.S.-based partner, Sierra Nevada, were awarded a $427.5 million deal, the Pentagon announced after the close of business on Wednesday.

The pair had won an initial $355 million contract in December 2011, but it was scrapped after a legal challenge from the losing bidder, then known as Hawker Beechcraft.

Brazilian leaders had voiced displeasure with the sudden cancellation, saying it would not be conducive to strengthening security ties with the United States.

Brazil’s air force plans to buy 36 new fighter jets, and Chicago-based Boeing Co (BA.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)’s F/A-18 Super Hornet is one of three finalists along with the Saab JAS-39 Gripen of Sweden and the Dassault Rafale of France.

Wichita, Kansas-based Beechcraft, which emerged from a Chapter 11 restructuring this month, said it was disappointed to have lost the competition.

“We will meet with the (U.S. Air Force) for a full debrief of the award and determine our next steps forward at that time,” Nicole Alexander, a company spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement.

(Reporting By Jim Wolf; editing by Carol Bishopric and David Gregorio)

“When it comes to Taiwan’s military capabilities, there seems to be a puzzling sense of complacency in Taipei,” said Senator John Cornyn.

Cornyn, a Texas Republican, is responsible for rounding up his party’s votes in the Senate. He has sought to force the Obama administration to sell Taiwan the 66 F-16C/D models it has sought in the past. The planes are produced at a Fort Worth, Texas, plant by Lockheed Martin Corp.

Cornyn voiced disappointment that Taiwan “seems to have backed off of its pursuit for new F-16s.” Taipei has agreed to a U.S. offer to upgrade its fleet of 145 older-model F-16 fighters as part of a projected $3.7 billion deal.

“Without aggressive and consistent advocacy by Taiwan for its own interests, it will be nearly impossible for its friends in Congress to push through the sale of F-16s or other advanced weapons,” he said in remarks read in his absence at a panel discussion Friday at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group.

The office that represents Taiwan’s interests in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations have held off on Taiwan’s standing request for new F-16s amid warnings from China, which deems the self-ruling island a rogue province subject to return to its fold, by force if necessary.

Taipei must find the political will to boost Taiwan’s defense budget, Cornyn said in his statement. He said it had been cut each year from 2009 through 2011.

“Taiwan’s leaders also need to stop allowing themselves to be bullied by the Obama Administration,” he said.

Some Taiwan officials have shown interest in leapfrogging the F-16C/D models to buy Lockheed Martin’s next-generation, radar-evading F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The F-35 is in early production.

Cornyn has used his senatorial powers twice in past two years to delay consideration of Obama’s nominees for senior jobs at the U.S. State Department and Defense Department in an effort to push the sale of new F-16s.

(Reporting By Jim Wolf; Editing by Todd Eastham)

The 50 Dreamliners in service were grounded worldwide on January 16, after a series of battery incidents, including a fire on board a parked 787 in Boston and an in-flight problem on another plane in Japan. The groundings have cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, with no end in sight.

Late on Thursday, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it would allow test flights, under more stringent rules, to monitor the batteries in flight. That followed an earlier, one-time flight to move a 787 from Texas to Washington state.

Earlier in the day, Deborah Hersman, head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said regulators must review the “special conditions” used in approving lithium-ion battery technology on the Dreamliners.

“There have now been two battery events resulting in smoke, less than two weeks apart, on two different aircraft,” Hersman said. “The assumptions used to certify the battery must be reconsidered,” she added.

Boeing investors took the news in stride, pushing shares slightly higher on the day. Analysts said the market was focusing on the wrong issue: the short-term question of fixing the battery, versus the longer-term prospect that the entire battery system might need to be approved again.

If the battery needs to be re-certified, “you’re talking about changes to the 50 they’ve delivered, significant amount of engineering commitment on the 787-9. I see this as still having a significant amount of question marks,” said Ken Herbert, an analyst at Imperial Capital in San Francisco.

Boeing shares are 3 percent higher since the 787 was grounded on January 16, despite the headaches it has caused the planemaker and the demands for compensation.

Even short sellers – investors who seek out shares that are likely to fall – have largely left the stock alone. According to Markit’s Data Explorers, just 0.3 percent of shares available for borrowing were being used for short bets as of Wednesday.

“The market is focusing on the battery short circuit, which implies a simple fix,” said Carter Leake, analyst at BB&T Capital Markets. “But they’re missing the much bigger issue, which is the questioning of the certification process. Hersman is basically saying we’re questioning the original certification altogether.”

TIME TO RECONSIDER

The NTSB’s Hersman mentioned nine so-called special conditions the FAA set in 2007 in approving Boeing’s use of the battery, and its plan to allow the battery to burn itself out if it caught fire, because the risk was considered extremely remote.

Boeing’s certification tests put the chances of smoke from a 787 battery at one in every 10 million flight hours.

“The 787 fleet has accumulated less than 100,000 flight hours yet there have now been two battery events,” Hersman said.

The special conditions and the design assumptions are part of a broad review that the FAA launched last month, before the second battery incident. Hersman said the NTSB was not yet making any further recommendations.

Hersman also said on Thursday that the NTSB has isolated the source of a January 7 battery fire in Boston to one of the battery’s eight cells, but still has not found the root cause of the fire.

The NTSB plans to issue an interim factual report in 30 days, though the decision of returning the plane to regular flight rests with the Federal Aviation Administration.

In a joint statement, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FAA Administrator Michael Huerta reiterated that the FAA’s comprehensive review was ongoing.

“We must finish this work before reaching conclusions about what changes or improvements the FAA should make going forward. The leading experts in this field are working to understand what happened and how we can safely get these aircraft back into service,” they said.

In the meantime, analysts have expressed concerns about a build-up of inventory, soaking up several billion dollars of cash, as Boeing continues to produce the 787.

“For Boeing, it is encouraging to see that there has been concrete progress in the investigation but the (NTSB’s) point that there is still a long road ahead ultimately appears more important,” said Nick Cunningham, aerospace analyst at UK-based Agency Partners, an independent research firm.

‘FERRY’ FLIGHT

As Hersman was addressing the news conference in Washington DC, the first 787 flight since mid-January left Texas, with no commercial passengers and a minimum crew, and landed safely in Washington with no visible issues. Ultimately scheduled for delivery to China Southern Airlines (600029.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), the aircraft has not yet been handed over to the customer.

The FAA had approved the single flight separately from Boeing’s request to run a series of test flights, placing a number of conditions, mostly having to do with testing and monitoring the plane’s battery.

Later in the day, the FAA cleared Boeing to resume test flights, stating that their primary purpose “will be to collect data about the battery and electrical system performance while the aircraft is airborne.”

Boeing said it would resume limited 787 test flights soon, without specifying a date, adding that it was “confident that the 787 is safe to operate for this flight test activity.”

While the investigation continues, Boeing is pursuing a number of ways to mitigate and contain a fire, if one starts in the batteries, one source familiar with the probe told Reuters. Three or four approaches would be pursued to ensure the batteries did not breach their containment systems, even if they caught fire, said the source.

(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Mari Saito and Tim Kelly in Tokyo, David Gaffen in New York and Bill Rigby in Everett, Washington; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; editing by Edward Tobin, Carol Bishopric and Gunna Dickson)

National Transportation Safety Board head Deborah Hersman
said regulators must review the “special conditions” used in
approving lithium-ion battery technology on the 787 Dreamliners,
after two battery related safety incidents in a matter of days.

The 50 Dreamliners in service were grounded worldwide on
Jan. 16, after a series of battery incidents, including a fire
on a parked 787 in Boston and an in-flight problem on another
plane in Japan. The groundings have cost airlines tens of
millions of dollars, with no end in sight.

“There have now been two battery events resulting in smoke,
less than two weeks apart, on two different aircraft,” Hersman
said. “The assumptions used to certify the battery must be
reconsidered,” she added.

Boeing investors took the news in stride, pushing shares
higher on the day. Analysts said the market was focusing on the
wrong issue: the short-term question of fixing the battery
versus the longer-term prospect the whole battery system might
need to be approved again.

If the battery needs to be re-certified, “you’re talking
about changes to the 50 they’ve delivered, significant amount of
engineering commitment on the 787-9. I see this as still having
a significant amount of question marks,” said Ken Herbert, an
analyst at Imperial Capital in San Francisco.

Boeing shares are 3 percent higher since the 787 was
grounded on Jan. 16, despite the headaches it has caused the
planemaker and the demands for compensation.

Since finished 787s are piling up undelivered, and Boeing
customers are already agitating for compensation, that could
complicate Boeing’s assumption the grounding would not
significantly affect it financially this year.

“The market is focusing on the battery short circuit, which
implies a simple fix,” said Carter Leake, analyst at BB&T
Capital Markets. “But they’re missing the much bigger issue,
which is the questioning of the certification process. Hersman
is basically saying we’re questioning the original certification
altogether.”

TIME TO RECONSIDER

The NTSB’s Hersman mentioned nine so-called special
conditions the FAA set in 2007 in approving Boeing’s use of the
battery, and its plan to allow the battery to burn itself out if
it caught fire, because the risk was considered extremely
remote.

Boeing’s certification tests put the chances of smoke from a
787 battery at one in every 10 million flight hours.

“The 787 fleet has accumulated less than 100,000 flight
hours yet there have now been two battery events resulting in
smoke, less than two weeks apart, on two different aircraft,”
Hersman said.

The special conditions and the design assumptions are part
of a broad review that the FAA launched last month, before the
second battery incident. Hersman said the NTSB was not yet
making any further recommendations.

Hersman also said on Thursday that the NTSB has isolated the
source of a Jan. 7 battery fire in Boston to a single one of the
battery’s eight cells, but still has not found the actual root
cause of the fire.

The NTSB plans to issue an interim factual report in 30
days, though the decision on returning the plane to regular
flight rests with the Federal Aviation Administration.

In a joint statement, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood
and FAA Administrator Michael Huerta reiterated that the FAA’s
comprehensive review was ongoing.

“We must finish this work before reaching conclusions about
what changes or improvements the FAA should make going forward.
The leading experts in this field are working to understand what
happened and how we can safely get these aircraft back into
service,” they said.

In the meantime, analysts have expressed concerns about a
build-up of inventory, soaking up several billion dollars of
cash, as Boeing continues to produce the 787 without making
deliveries.

“For Boeing, it is encouraging to see that there has been
concrete progress in the investigation but the (NTSB’s) point
that there is still a long road ahead ultimately appears more
important,” said Nick Cunningham, aerospace analyst at UK-based
Agency Partners, an independent research firm.

‘TEST’ FLIGHT

As Hersman was addressing the news conference in Washington
DC, the first 787 flight since mid-January left Texas for
Washington state, a so-called ferry flight with no commercial
passengers and a minimum crew to see if any battery problems
crop up.

According to flight tracking website FlightAware, it left
Dallas at 9:25 a.m. CST (1525 GMT) for the nearly
three-and-a-half hour flight to Everett, Washington. The website
indicated that it landed at 10:49 a.m. PST (1849 GMT). A Reuters
reporter at the airport said the plane had no visible issues.

Ultimately scheduled for delivery to China Southern Airlines
, the aircraft has not yet been handed over to the
customer.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday approved
the flight, which differed from Boeing’s request to run a series
of test flights. It placed a number of conditions on the one-off
trip, mostly having to do with testing and monitoring the
plane’s battery.

While the investigation continues, Boeing is pursuing
multiple ways to mitigate and contain a fire, if one starts in
the batteries, one source familiar with the probe told Reuters.
Three or four varying approaches would be pursued to ensure the
batteries did not breach their containment systems, even if they
caught fire, said the source.

Regulators should now reconsider the assumptions used to certify the plane’s lithium-ion batteries, Deborah Hersman said at a news conference in Washington, adding to the uncertainty of when the cutting-edge plane might be cleared to fly again.

The 50 Dreamliners in service were grounded worldwide on January 16, after a series of battery incidents, including a fire on a parked 787 in Boston and an in-flight problem on another plane in Japan. The groundings have cost airlines tens of millions of dollars, with no end in sight.

The NTSB probe is focused on the Boston fire, and Hersman said investigators now believe multiple short circuits in a single cell may have led to a chemical reaction known as a thermal runaway, which cascaded to other cells and spread the fire.

Hersman said a review is needed of the “special conditions” under which aviation regulators approved Boeing’s use of this particular battery technology on the 787, a decision that has lately come under close scrutiny.

“There have now been two battery events resulting in smoke, less than two weeks apart, on two different aircraft. This investigation has demonstrated that a short-circuit in a single cell can propagate to adjacent cells and result in smoke and fire. The assumptions used to certify the battery must be reconsidered,” she said.

The NTSB plans to issue an interim factual report in 30 days, though the decision on returning the plane to regular flight rests with the Federal Aviation Administration.

As Hersman was addressing the news conference in Washington DC, the first 787 flight since mid-January left Texas for Washington state, a so-called ferry flight being run under heavy conditions to see if any battery problems crop up.

According to flight tracking website FlightAware, it left Dallas at 9:25 a.m. CST (1525 GMT) for the nearly three-and-a-half hour flight to Everett, Washington. Ultimately scheduled for delivery to China Southern Airlines, the aircraft has not yet been handed over to the customer.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday it had approved the flight, which differed from Boeing’s request to run a series of test flights. It placed a number of conditions on the one-off trip, mostly having to do with testing and monitoring the plane’s battery.

While the investigation continues, Boeing is pursuing multiple ways to mitigate and contain a fire, if one starts in the batteries, one source familiar with the probe told Reuters. Three or four varying approaches would be pursued to ensure the batteries did not breach their containment systems, even if they caught fire, said the source.

(Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Paris, Mari Saito and Tim Kelly in Tokyo and Alwyn Scott in New York; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; editing by Gunna Dickson)

Regulators should now reconsider the assumptions used to
certify the plane’s lithium-ion batteries, Deborah Hersman said
at a news conference in Washington, adding to the uncertainty of
when the cutting-edge plane might be cleared to fly again.

The 50 Dreamliners in service were grounded worldwide on
Jan. 16, after a series of battery incidents, including a fire
on a parked 787 in Boston and an in-flight problem on another
plane in Japan. The groundings have cost airlines tens of
millions of dollars, with no end in sight.

The NTSB probe is focused on the Boston fire, and Hersman
said investigators now believe multiple short circuits in a
single cell may have led to a chemical reaction known as a
thermal runaway, which cascaded to other cells and spread the
fire.

Hersman said a review is needed of the “special conditions”
under which aviation regulators approved Boeing’s use of this
particular battery technology on the 787, a decision that has
lately come under close scrutiny.

“There have now been two battery events resulting in smoke,
less than two weeks apart, on two different aircraft. This
investigation has demonstrated that a short-circuit in a single
cell can propagate to adjacent cells and result in smoke and
fire. The assumptions used to certify the battery must be
reconsidered,” she said.

The NTSB plans to issue an interim factual report in 30
days, though the decision on returning the plane to regular
flight rests with the Federal Aviation Administration.

As Hersman was addressing the news conference in Washington
DC, the first 787 flight since mid-January left Texas for
Washington state, a so-called ferry flight being run under heavy
conditions to see if any battery problems crop up.

According to flight tracking website FlightAware, it left
Dallas at 9:25 a.m. CST (1525 GMT) for the nearly
three-and-a-half hour flight to Everett, Washington. Ultimately
scheduled for delivery to China Southern Airlines,
the aircraft has not yet been handed over to the customer.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday it had
approved the flight, which differed from Boeing’s request to run
a series of test flights. It placed a number of conditions on
the one-off trip, mostly having to do with testing and
monitoring the plane’s battery.

While the investigation continues, Boeing is pursuing
multiple ways to mitigate and contain a fire, if one starts in
the batteries, one source familiar with the probe told Reuters.
Three or four varying approaches would be pursued to ensure the
batteries did not breach their containment systems, even if they
caught fire, said the source.

The outgoing defense secretary, in remarks aired Sunday on the NBC program “Meet the Press,” said there had been many pieces to the “puzzle” solved to find bin Laden, who was held responsible for the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

“Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time – interrogation tactics that were used,” said Panetta, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2009 until he became U.S. defense secretary on July 1, 2011.

“I think we could have gotten Bin Laden without that,” Panetta added in response to a question about what the interviewer called enhanced interrogation or torture.

Panetta did not elaborate on how this might have been done, but said most of the intelligence used to find bin Laden had been stitched together without resort to enhanced interrogation.

He was commenting on the 2012 film “Zero Dark Thirty,” which portrayed the hunt that led to the successful May 2, 2011, raid on the al-Qaeda leader’s hideout in Pakistan.

Some CIA veterans have defended the use of harsh techniques such as sleep deprivation, hypothermia, stress positions, slapping and waterboarding, to obtain information that helped get bin Laden. Waterboarding, in which a drowning sensation is inflicted on a captive, is often described as torture.

Jose Rodriguez, who played a key role in setting up and administering the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program, recently traced an early break in the bin Laden hunt to a detainee subjected to what Rodriguez called enhanced interrogation short of waterboarding.

From this detainee came, in 2004, the first substantive information about bin Laden’s courier, according to Rodriguez, author of “Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA actions after 9/11 Saved American Lives.”

“After obtaining this essential lead on the courier, years of meticulous intelligence work followed,” he wrote in a January 3 essay in the Washington Post.

Having covert prisons abroad known as black sites and “compliant terrorists,” the CIA was able to go back to detainees to check leads, ask follow-up questions and clarify information, said Rodriguez, head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Service from 2002 to 2004 and then director of the National Clandestine Service until late 2007.

“Without that capacity, we would have been lost,” he wrote.

(Reporting By Jim Wolf; Editing by Sandra Maler)

The bulbous, helium-filled “aerostats” – each more than three quarters the length of a football field at 243 feet – are to be stitched into existing defenses as part of an exercise of new technology ordered by the Defense Department.

The coming addition to the umbrella over Washington is known as Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS. Raytheon Co is the prime contractor.

“We’re trying to determine how the surveillance radar information from the JLENS platforms can be integrated with existing systems in the National Capital Region,” said Michael Kucharek, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

NORAD, a binational command, is responsible for defending air space over the United States and Canada, including the Washington area with its many pieces of important infrastructure.

The most significant air attack in the area took place on September 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda militants hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757, and crashed it into the Pentagon.

To expand the time available to detect and defend against any future attacks from commercial aircraft, major changes were made under Operation Noble Eagle, combat air patrols begun after the September 11 attacks.

Airspace restrictions were extended. U.S. Army Sentinel radars for low-altitude radar coverage and short-range Stinger/Avenger missile batteries were deployed.

Washington is currently guarded by an air-defense system that includes Federal Aviation Administration radars and Department of Homeland Security helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft on alert at Reagan National Airport to intercept slow, low-flying aircraft.

EXPECTED IN SEPTEMBER

The JLENS craft are expected to arrive in the capital area by September 30, according to Kucharek, who is also a spokesman for the U.S. Northern Command, which coordinates the Pentagon’s homeland defense role.

A “capabilities demonstration,” as the test is called, is expected to last as long as three years. Its location is being withheld, pending notification of law alerts and others

JLENS craft work in a roughly $450 million pair, known as an orbit, each tethered to mobile moorings. One of the aerostats carries a powerful long-range surveillance radar with a 360-degree look-around capability that can reach out to 340 miles. The other carries a radar used for targeting.

Operating as high as 10,000 feet for up to 30 days at a time, JLENS is meant to give the military more time to detect and react to threats, including cruise missiles and manned and unmanned aircraft, compared with ground-based radar.

The system is also designed to defend against tactical ballistic missiles, large caliber rockets and moving vehicles that could be used for attacks, including boats, cars and trucks.

A success in the U.S. capital area could give a boost to the JLENS program, which has been scaled back sharply along with the Pentagon’s other 15 or so lighter-than-air vehicle efforts.

Blimp-like craft offer several advantages compared with fixed-wing aircraft, including lower cost, larger payload capacity and extended time aloft. However, their funding is to fall sharply as Pentagon spending shrinks to help pare trillion-dollar-a-year U.S. deficits.

Peter Huessy, a consultant on nuclear deterrence and missile defense, said the system would compliment current U.S. missile-defense capabilities.

(Reporting By Jim Wolf; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

Deborah Hersman, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, made clear that investigators have found a series of “symptoms” in the battery damaged in a January 7 fire in Boston, but not the underlying cause of the problem. She also said the agency would be looking at the design of the battery compartment area of the plane and whether the certification standards had been strong enough.

The comments were seen by some safety experts within the aerospace industry as a clear signal that this is no longer just a teething issue for the new plane.

That will raise questions about the financial impact for Boeing, which is still running its assembly lines and backing up aircraft to be delivered, and for airlines, many of which counted on getting the futuristic 787 for their expansion plans.

“We are early in our investigation, we have a lot of activities to undertake,” Hersman told a news conference.

“This is an unprecedented event. We are very concerned. We do not expect to see fire events on board aircraft. This is a very serious air safety concern.”

She rebuffed multiple questions on how long the investigation would take, making clear it could be weeks or more. She also would not say when the 787 would fly again, which is in the hands of the Federal Aviation Administration.

Former NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said the briefing made it clear the investigators had come up short in their hunt for the cause of the battery fire.

“It’s going to take them longer,” he said in an interview. “Weeks, not days.”

Richard Aboulafia, aerospace analyst with the Virginia-based Teal Group, said the NTSB briefing was a sobering reminder that investigators have not made much headway on finding a cause for the battery problems.

“It was hard to find a lot of optimism on the call. It sounds like they’re still in the middle of a lot of hard work and a lot of mysteries,” Aboulafia said. “It just wasn’t encouraging. Fire is the last thing you want on an airplane.”

NO TIMETABLE TO FLY

The 787 has been grounded worldwide since an All Nippon Airways plane made an emergency landing in Japan on January 16 after a battery incident, which Hersman said may or may not have been a fire.

That emergency landing came after a fire occurred on a Japan Airlines Co Ltd 787 on the tarmac in Boston.

In a statement late on Thursday, Boeing said it was cooperating with regulators and had teams of “hundreds of engineering and technical experts” working on the situation.

“Boeing is eager to see both investigative groups continue their work and determine the cause of these events, and we support their thorough resolution,” the company said, adding it was not permitted to comment directly on the ongoing investigations.

Still, Boeing shares are actually up 1.3 percent since regulators said the plane – full of high-tech innovations that are supposed to be a model for future aviation – could not fly.

At least one customer, Poland’s LOT, has already raised the prospect of seeking compensation for its losses. Another, China’s Hainan Airlines Co Ltd, said this week it was disappointed in the delays and that its expansion plans had been affected as a result.

PUTTING OUT FIRES

Rosenker, the former NTSB official, noted that other new planes had problems when they were introduced, but not fires, which makes this situation stand out.

“Fire is something you don’t fool with,” he said. “You’ve got to understand that, particularly given the short period of time the aircraft has been flying.”

Boeing has said in the past that, because of their chemical composition, these batteries are difficult to extinguish once they catch fire. As such, the plane is designed to contain fires while they burn themselves out.

Hersman, talking to reporters after the news conference, confirmed that there is no fire suppression system in the area where the battery burned, nor any way to access it in-flight.

Asked if the lack of a fire suppression system in the battery compartment was a design flaw, she said: “We’ll certainly be looking at the design and we’ll be looking at the certification standards to determine if they were robust enough.”

If regulators do decide design changes are needed, that could have implications for Boeing’s European rival Airbus and its future A350 jetliner.

“We believe so far we have a robust design, however we will draw the lessons from the 787,” Airbus Chief Executive Fabrice Bregier told Reuters Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Billed as Europe’s response to the Dreamliner, the A350 is due to enter service next year using lithium-ion batteries, but without the same reliance on electrical systems as the 787, something Airbus says will put less burden on the batteries.

However, Airbus has so far declined to comment on how it would tackle a battery fire if one did break out on board.

DELAYS PERSIST

On Thursday, FAA and NTSB inspectors visited a UTC Aerospace Systems plant in Phoenix, although a company spokesman declined to say what they focused or how long they would be at the plant. UTC makes the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit.

Fiona Greig, a spokeswoman for Securaplane, which makes the battery charging unit and start power unit, said its equipment was tested and worked as it should. She declined comment when asked about the issues mentioned in those units by the NTSB.

The 787 program was already years behind schedule before last week’s grounding, which means Boeing cannot deliver newly manufactured planes to customers.

That means customers such as United Continental Holdings Inc may have to wait even longer for planes on order. The company’s United Airlines already flies six Dreamliners.

“History teaches us that all new aircraft types have issues and the 787 is no different,” United Continental Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Smisek said during the carrier’s earnings conference call. “We continue to have confidence in the aircraft and in Boeing’s ability to fix the issues, just as they have done on every other new aircraft model they’ve produced.”

Smisek said on Thursday that the carrier still expects to take delivery of two more 787s in the second half of the year.

Boeing has already delivered 50 of the 787s. Around half have been in operation in Japan, but airlines in India, South America, Poland, Qatar and Ethiopia are also flying the planes, as is U.S. carrier United.

The grounding of the Dreamliner, an advanced carbon-composite aircraft with a list price of $207 million, has already forced hundreds of flight cancellations worldwide.

(Additional reporting by Karen Jacobs in Atlanta, Tim Hepher in Paris, Axel Threlfall in Davos and David Schwartz in Phoenix; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by David Gregorio and Andre Grenon)