B787 - ELT AD

Monday, July 22, 2013

FAA to Require Boeing 787 Inspections

By Woodrow Bellamy III

FAA officials are working on a new airworthiness directive requiring Boeing 787 operators to perform mandatory inspections of the aircraft's Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELT). 

 

 

The agency issued a statement over the weekend indicating that the soon-to-be mandatory inspections were prompted by a report from the U.K.'s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), in which the branch suspected that the ELT was the cause of the fire onboard a parked Ethiopian Airlines 787 at Heathrow International Airport recently. 

 

AAIB believes the ELTs, manufactured by Honeywell, contain enough stored energy to initiate a fire, even while the aircraft is not powered up. The ELT is designed to broadcast a signal in the event of a crash to help rescuers locate the downed aircraft. The batteries in the system are separate from the aircraft's electrical power, so that in the event that power is lost, the emergency transmissions would still go through.