A small team of top machinists at Boeing’s Auburn plant is building high-strength containment boxes for the lithium-ion batteries on the 787 as part of a redesign to get the planes flying again as soon as April.
Boeing on Wednesday instructed a small team of top machinists at its Auburn parts plant to begin building new, high-strength containment boxes for the lithium-ion batteries on its 787s as part of a redesign intended to get the planes flying again as soon as April.
An Auburn insider said the company ordered 200 such boxes, with the first 100 to be ready by March 18.
Commercial Airplanes CEO Ray Conner will lay out the company’s plan to Federal Aviation Administration officials Friday, but it’s unclear whether regulators will sign on to the fast-paced schedule.
Boeing executives briefed key members of Congress in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, telling them the company has developed a permanent fix to the battery problems and hopes to have the Dreamliners return to passenger service quickly, assuming prompt FAA approval. The 50 delivered 787s have been grounded since last month.
A congressional aide said Boeing representatives in one such meeting “were adamant that it will be a permanent fix, and rejected reports that mentioned a temporary fix.” They also cited the April target date, the aide said.
Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel declined to comment on any conversations with regulators but reiterated an earlier statement that “good progress is being made” toward finding a fix.
According to a person familiar with Boeing’s proposal, Conner plans to provide FAA head Michael Huerta details of the fix along lines previously reported: most important, a stronger outer containment box and a system of high-pressure tubes that vent any gases directly out of the airplane.
Another element is that the eight cells inside the redesigned battery box will be separated by more insulation, possibly high-temperature glass.
Boeing believes it can implement those and other new battery design elements quickly and can make it a permanent fix, to be incorporated on all subsequent Dreamliners. That contradicts earlier reports in The Seattle Times and elsewhere that the company will first implement a temporary fix.
Boeing engineers contend, and hope their tests will show, their redesign will prevent a runaway battery fire.
It’s unclear if the FAA will be ready to move as swiftly as Boeing would like.
Boeing is unlikely to get a full go-ahead Friday. There will be a back and forth to follow, with requirements for flight tests to validate Boeing’s solution.
Investigators at the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are still looking for the root cause of the two incidents that prompted the crisis — a battery fire in a 787 on the ground in Boston in early January, followed eight days later by a smoldering battery on a 787 flight in Japan. The FAA ordered the Dreamliner grounded after the second incident.
The FAA must take into account the NTSB investigation, which found the Boston fire was started by a short circuit in a single battery cell but hasn’t established what caused that short.
In the absence of knowing the root cause, said the person with knowledge of Boeing’s proposal, the fix accounts for the possibility that a battery cell could overheat at some time in the future. The new battery design aims to ensure the plane is safe if that happens.
The person made an analogy to how the FAA handled the crash of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in 1996.
While investigators into that tragedy learned that the Boeing 747’s fuel tank had exploded, the ignition source was never pinned down.
That forced the FAA to come up with a way to eliminate the chance of any explosion, regardless of ignition source: It mandated a fuel-tank inerting system that pumped nitrogen into the tank to displace flammable fuel vapor.
“That seems to be the discussion now: It would be great to find the root cause, but let’s take it a step further and eliminate the possibilities,” the person said.
Industry analysts have expressed skepticism the FAA will readily approve a fix that focuses on containing an in-flight fire, rather than preventing one.
But the person familiar with Boeing’s fix insisted “it’s not containment versus prevention. It’s containment and prevention.”
The idea is that venting off the airplane all the gas from an overheated cell will prevent an oxygen fire inside the battery. Meanwhile, the better thermal insulation between cells should prevent the heat from spreading through the battery and setting off adjacent cells.
“If you redesign the battery so it’s not possible for the cells to propagate into a batterywide fire, then you’ve prevented that from happening,” the person said. “And on top of that, you are building a containment box so that, if there is a problem, you are doubly protected.”
Still, he said, Boeing’s proposed timetable for getting the 787s back in service “is pretty aggressive.”
The news of Boeing’s fast-track fix came on the same day the investigation of the Japan in-flight incident appeared to add a new wrinkle.
The problem on that aircraft was overheating of the main battery in the forward electronics bay.
But according to The Associated Press, the Japan Transport Ministry said Wednesday the aircraft’s other lithium-ion battery — the one in the rear electronics bay that’s connected to the jet’s auxiliary power unit — was miswired and improperly connected to the main battery that overheated.
It’s unclear what impact that finding will have.
Meanwhile, Boeing’s plan to fix the battery is in motion.
The Boeing Auburn employee, who asked for anonymity, said the work of building the new battery boxes has been designated urgent and top priority.
Three crews of six volunteers — all “very talented mechanics” — will work in three daily shifts. The parts needed have not yet come in, and design changes are expected as the work proceeds, the employee said.
