By Clive Irving
Exclusive insight from inside
Boeing and urgent new warnings from the FAA make a compelling case—based
on fact, not conspiracy—about what happened.
Why
have both the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing suddenly both
gone public in issuing warnings about the “immediate and urgent risk”
(quoting the FAA) of allowing consignments of lithium-ion batteries to
be shipped in the cargo of passenger-carrying flights?
Last Thursday’s statement
by the FAA’s Angela Stubblefield, a hazardous materials expert, that
there is now a body of evidence that the batteries can cause explosions
and fires capable of destroying an airplane echoes the urgency of a
warning sent to all airlines by Boeing in July that the shipment of
batteries created “an unacceptable risk” to crew and passengers.
A week later Airbus followed, issuing a similar warning recommending
that operators of all of its airplanes conduct “a full risk assessment”
of what was rather vaguely termed “high quantities” of the batteries in
cargo.
The Boeing warning was issued as a Multi Operator Message. These are
normally issued to inform airlines of a newly detected safety problem
experienced by an airline during operations and are related to a
specific airplane type—but in this case the warning covered all Boeing airplanes. The warnings are also issued following a crash if investigators have homed in on a possible cause.
Specifically, the Boeing warning recommended that “high density
packages of lithium-ion batteries and cells not be transported as cargo
on passenger airplanes until such time as safer methods of transport are
established and followed.”
No precursor event was cited—publicly.
However, as I have previously reported, as part of the investigation
into the loss of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, Boeing has run computer simulations aimed at re-creating the behavior of the Boeing 777 during the last hours of its course into the southern Indian Ocean.
One persistently discussed scenario is whether the airplane was
stricken by a fire in a cargo hold initiated in a consignment of
lithium-ion batteries. There is now certainly a solid body of
circumstantial evidence to justify including this scenario’s effects in a
simulation.
Click here for the full article.
Source: The Daily Beast
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