FAA approves resumption of Dreamliner flights

Air India's Dreamliner aircraft, grounded since January after battery fire incidents, may resume normal operations by mid-May with the US aviation regulator FAA approving Boeing's revamped battery system for these new generation long-haul aircraft.
"A team of engineers from Boeing is being flown into India and they are likely to start work by Monday to reset the new batteries on the six Dreamliners of Air India. They will work 24X7," DGCA chief Arun Mishra told PTI.
Engineers of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation and Air India would be working with the Boeing team in Mumbai. They are expected to hand over all the six Boeing-787s by the first week of next month, he said.

After checks and test flights, if these are found successful, DGCA would withdraw its January 17 order of grounding these planes, Mishra said.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved the new battery design made by the Japanese battery manufacturer and Boeing. Following the battery fire incidents, the entire global fleet of 50 Boeing-787s, owned by eight airlines, including Air India, was grounded.
Air India officials said all the affected airlines would now wait for FAA to issue an Airworthiness Directive in the next few days before they can start the work on getting the aircraft back in operation.
A team of over 20 engineers are being flown to India by Boeing to help Air India's engineering team install the new battery kit in each of the six aeroplanes, they said, adding it would take almost a week to install the new batteries on one plane but work would go on simultaneously on two planes.

"We will start flying only after we get at least two of these aircraft operational," airline officials said, adding that they hoped to start B-787 operations in the domestic sector from the middle of May and resume international flights to Paris and Frankfurt by May end.