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Airlines urged to inspect 787s after extinguisher flaw

Boeing asked airlines to inspect their 787s to ensure proper configuration of fire-extinguishing bottles after uncovering a defect this week it said stemmed from an error that occurred at a supplier.

Boeing has provided users of the 787s with directions on addressing improperly configured bottles, and the inspection on each airplane will only take a few minutes, Rob Henderson, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail today. The fault doesn’t present an immediate flight-safety issue, Boeing said.

The Dreamliner suffered its latest setback earlier this week after ANA Holdings Inc, the model’s biggest operator, found wiring defects in the fire-suppression system on three aircraft.

Boeing’s flagship jet, which made its commercial debut in 2011, is already under scrutiny following a fire in London last month that UK investigators linked to an emergency beacon. “The safety of crews and passengers on board our airplanes is our top priority,” Henderson said in the e-mail. “Improperly configured components are not acceptable and this issue is being addressed promptly.” The bottle configuration error occurred at the facility of supplier Kidde Plc, a United Technologies Corp company, Henderson said. Kidde Graviner referred all questions to parent UTC Aerospace Systems in the US which could not immediately be reached for comment outside business hours.

ANA detected the fault in a flight that was due to depart Tokyo’s Haneda airport August 14. The fault would trigger the wrong extinguisher in the event of a blaze in one of the two engines of the composite-material jet, ANA said. The bottles are not the only means to put out a blaze in the engines and there are multiple redundancies within the fire extinguishing system, Henderson said.