The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has released a lengthy report delving into the battery fire that grounded the entire Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet last year. Though the agency doesn’t explicitly identify the cause of the incident, it does name the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Boeing, and lithium-ion battery manufacturer GS Yuasa all as collective culprits for the fire, with regard to how the battery was manufactured and how it was permitted for use on the plane.
A series of failures by the Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing Co. and its supplier of lithium ion batteries contributed to the fire that led to the grounding of the global 787 jet fleet last year, according to a report Monday from the U.S. aviation safety watchdog. The National Transportation Safety Board stopped short of identifying a definitive cause of the short circuit that triggered a battery fire aboard a Japan Airlines Co. 787 Dreamliner at Boston’s Logan International Airport in January 2013, but said design, manufacturing and regulatory deficiencies contributed to the incident. The agency’s experts ruled out overcharging, environmental and other issues as probable factors, leaving some type of contamination or a manufacturing defect as the most likely cause. The board said Japanese battery maker GS Yuasa Corp. ’s “manufacturing process allowed defects” that could cause internal short circuiting of the battery’s internal cells.
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