Heathrow fire on Boeing Dreamliner 'started in battery component'

This transmitter whose battery is implicated is a stock, off-the-shelf component used in multiple models of aircraft. It is not unique to the 787, was not developed for the 787, and it seems to be an unfortunate coincidence that the failure of one of those units occurred in a 787, when allegedly something like 6000 of these transmitter units have been in service for nearly a decade. Honeywell (which makes the transmitter) may be in for trouble, but apparently Boeing's stock price has rebounded a bit since people in the market actually, you know, read the available information and realized this isn't a "Boeing 787 battery problem".

Of course, I'm sure that any moment Elon Musk (PBUH) will be along to explain why the entire aviation industry was wrong to use these transmitters.

This device wasn't in a battery enclosure. The ELT is a stand-alone device installed in the crown of the aircraft. According to the article, it was produced by Honeywell and there are 6,000 currently installed in aircraft of various types.

ELTs used to use NiCd batteries. I know there have been fire problems with ELT batteries on Cessnas and other GA aircraft in recent years. It sounds like the 787 was just doubly unlucky to be the commercial frame to get an ELT fire.

No, these are not rechargeable as far as I am aware. RESCU 406 SE2 lists a battery life of 12 years. I don't know which the 787 is equipped with.

https://commerce.honeywell.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/NEC...

FYI LiMnO2 is the chemistry used in a lot of coin cells (any battery that starts with "CR" is one, such as the CR2032 used for BIOS RTC/SRAM)

It's commonly used for items that will use very low-power for a very long time, with possible high-current pulses, which makes it great for alarms (it's also a common chemistry in "lifetime battery" smoke alarms, for example).

Larger lithium primary cells are a fire-risk (and are not permitted for passenger carry unless installed in a device).

I wonder if the composite material the 787 is made of didn't increase the risk that a fire like that spread, though. It seems incredibly unlikely that this is the first time that part took fire.

That kind of diversion is very common for a new type entering service. The crew doesn't have a lot of time in the type, they know MX doesn't have a ton of time working on the type, and so their default when anything seems amiss is to get the plane on the ground and have it looked at.

The diversion rate right now for the 787 is enormous, but nearly all the diversions are "abundance of caution" calls by the crew.

"When it rains it pours."

Re: lithium

Yesterday I was just charging the lithium battery for a new RC Chopper I had purchased which was sitting in the outer office. I heard a large pop almost like a gun went off. Ran out and the battery had exploded! Only used it one time (was on the 2nd charge).

I then measured the temperature with an infrared sensor and it read 216degees F in the exposed part that I got a reading off of (varied between about 160 and 216 depending on where I probed).

Now I can't fly until they send me a new batter and charger which they have to do by ground because the batteries can't be shipped by air.

To be fair to Boeing, this Honeywell ELT has nothing to do with them and is on thousands of planes. It seems it may just have been an unlucky coincidence that the first fire was on a 787.

I think Musk got out ahead of this one actually.

He called them out after the first incident happend: http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/02/26/elon-...

Boeing probably should have licensed Tesla tech after the first incident.

I feel that with low enough risk rates, prevalence in new battery products will still increase to the point that Lithium Ion and similar high end batteries are currently at. When cell phones and laptops were making frequent news stories by exploding, it scared a lot of people, but advances in battery technology were made to make them safer and now they are ubiquitous.

I agree that a widely held negative view of the technology would be detrimental to many of our favorite startups. However, so far it seems that the popular (not political) press has been very factually oriented. For instance the bad press from the several problems that Fisker had with launching their vehicle did not spill over and cloud Tesla's reputation. (Although not all of Fisker's problems had to do with batteries, obviously.) Hopefully Boeing is only ruining their own rep (though the impact on US-headquartered manufacturing is unfortunate). Tesla is, so far, unscathed.

Interestingly enough, Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Staubel created some kind of hybrid propulsion system for aircraft, that I believe was purchased by Boeing. So there are definitely connections (if not continuity of technology) between the companies.

[Edited for clarity]

This particular battery is a somewhat old battery technology commercial LiMnO2 batteries date to the 70s