Dreamliner ETOPS doubts get louder
Baku, March 27 (AZERTAC). If the 787s come back without approval to fly over remote and oceanic routes they are not going to be useful for Jetstar or Qantas.
The significance of detailed US reports about doubts over the ETOPS approval for Boeing 787s is in its implications for public policy.
The 787s, like all modern wide body twin engined airliners, are delivered ETOPS 180 ‘ready’, meaning that if an airline gets the approval of its national safety regulator for a set of enhanced maintenance procedures, it can be flown as far as 180 minutes single engine speed from an emergency or diversionary air field.
As such, ETOPS 180 is the gold standard for long range over ocean or high arctic routes, and under special circumstances or case by case approvals, has in the past been extended beyond 200 minutes and may eventually be extended to 330 minutes distance at single engine speed even in regular service.
These reports, circulating in the US media today, are evidence of where the regulatory debate inside the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration which was responsible for the certification of the Dreamliners is headed.
Any strong move toward revoking the 787s ETOPS 180 rating would have to be of deep concern to Boeing and customers like Qantas/Jetstar. That risk was first reported by Plane Talking on 21 February as a result of discussions with US sources.
The technical discussion about continued ETOPS approval has been burning away from almost day one, when a fire broke out in the rear electrical bay of a Japan Airlines 787 on 7 January.
In theory Boeing’s stance on the new battery configuration and containment arrangements, the Super Fire Box as some have dubbed it, would not compromise an ETOPS rating, if you are hairy chested, and think the risks are as minimal as Boeing had the FAA believe in 2008 when it insisted that fires in heavy duty lithium-ion batteries like the failures that caused the current grounding were in fact impossible.
That message appears with hindsight to be a triumph of corporate pressure and spin on the FAA, which ought to have known better, and if the tenor of current reports is correct, does now know better.
A Boeing 787 that can’t operate routes that require ETOPS 180 would be just about useless to many airlines, including Qantas subsidiary Jetstar, which is supposed to get the first of 14 on order this August.
Of course airlines like Jetstar, or even Qantas, could argue that such a 787 would be just fine between Sydney and Melbourne.
Try convincing regular Cityflyer customers that a jet considered too unsafe to fly long ocean routes because of doubts about its fire risks would be fine for Sydney-Melbourne or Sydney-Brisbane!
The 787 has to come back into service at ETOPS 180, and the fix and the lifting of the grounding order has to be convincing at the consumer level.
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