Home Unlabelled Ethiopian Airlines' Boeing 787 Dreamliner caught fire at London's HeathrowAirport.
Ethiopian Airlines' Boeing 787 Dreamliner caught fire at London's HeathrowAirport.
A fire broke out inside a parked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner at London's Heathrow airport on Friday evening forcing Heathrow to shut down its runways at peak evening traffic time.
It was parked in a remote bay and no passengers were aboard at the time. It caught fire and its roof just in front of the tail, scarred by the blaze. The airport was closed for an hour and a half causing long delays.
This is bad news for Boeing. The Dreamliner has had problems in the past. Shortly after being introduce into commercial service they were two aircrafts that had problems with the batteries and catching fire, and that led the whole fleet worldwide be grounded in January.
Around 50 Dreamliners worldwide were grounded in January 2013 after malfunctions with the plane's Lithium-Ion batteries. After Boeing modified the jets with new batteries, flights resumed in April. This Ethiopian Airlines plane was the first to resume flights. The fire at Heathrow could be something else and might have nothing to do with battery issues, but whatever the cause of this incident might have been, Boeing brand has been hit hard and the effects are already been felt on the New York stock exchange whereby Boeing shares have fallen sharply.
On which runway did it happen? What's the status of third runway at Heathrow?