All Nippon Airways Co. and Japan Airlines Co. announced
Monday they have begun installing modified batteries into their grounded Boeing
787 Dreamliners.
ANA began swapping
batteries in five jets grounded at Narita, Haneda, Okayama and Matsuyama
airports, while JAL worked on jets at Narita and Haneda airports. ANA has 17
Dreamliners in its fleet, while JAL has seven.
According to ANA,
each jet will take about five days to modify, and all 17 of its Dreamliners
will be ready in about a month. It expects to start flying passengers in June
after several weeks of test flights.
The move comes
after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s announcement Friday that it
had approved Boeing’s design for modifications to the troubled battery system
of the 787 jet.
The Japanese
airlines received manuals for the procedures from Boeing on Sunday, they said.
Both airlines
still need permission from the Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism
Ministry before they can fly the planes. The ministry’s Civil Aviation Bureau
is in its final stages of the Dreamliner probe, Shigeru Takano, the agency’s
director in charge of air transport safety, said last week in Tokyo.
ANA, whose All
Nippon Airways unit is the biggest operator of Dreamliners, said in January the
grounding of the fleet cut sales by ¥1.4 billion that month. The Tokyo-based
carrier canceled 3,601 flights through May, affecting 167,820 passengers.
The carrier is
targeting June to restart commercial flights with Boeing’s most advanced jet,
President Shinichiro Ito said this month.
JAL, the
second-biggest operator with seven planes, said last month that flight
cancellations would cut sales for the Tokyo-based company by ¥1.1 billion
through the end of March. A spokesman declined to comment on the repairs.
A total of 50
Dreamliners worldwide have been grounded after one operated by ANA made an
emergency landing on Jan. 16 at an airport in western Japan due to smoke in the
cockpit. JAL and ANA together operate almost half the 50 787s delivered around
the world.
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