Boeing halts test flights of its delay-plagued 787 Dreamliner

US aerospace giant Boeing halted test flights on its new 787 Dreamliner, dealing a fresh setback to a programme already running about three years behind schedule. Boeing announced the decision after a fire aboard a test plane on Tuesday forced an emergency landing.

At a news conference in Seattle in the western US state of Washington, Boeing spokesman Loretta Gunter said the fire was the most serious incident since test flights began last December.

“I don’t know how long the suspension will last,” Ms Gunter said, adding that the focus would be on ground testing until the incident was understood and that it was unclear if the fire would further delay the programme.

The 787 Dreamliner, launched in April 2004, has suffered a series of setbacks, many of them from challenges in the international production of parts for the mid-size plane.

Boeing says the high-tech 787, made essentially from composite materials, will deliver a 20 per cent reduction in fuel consumption compared with planes of similar size flying today.

The first 787 was initially promised to Japanese launch customer All Nippon Airways in the first half of 2008. Delivery has now been put back to around February 2011. Smoke filled the ZA002, one of Boeing’s six test 787s, on Tuesday, forcing an emergency landing in Laredo, Texas.

“There was a fire on board the airplane, which created the smoke in the cabin area,” Ms Gunter said, stressing that the investigation was of “an incident, not an accident.

“We don’t know where it started. We need to analyse all the data,” the Boeing official said, adding that the fire was not in the main cabin and had been extinguished before the plane landed.

“The most likely outcome is a modest delay to the flight test with a potential multi-week slip in first delivery, which is well within the range of investor expectations,” Barclays Capital analysts said in a client note. The troubled plane was painted in ANA livery and like three other 787 test planes was equipped with a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine. The remaining two have General Electric GEnx engines.

The British firm has been in the spotlight after a spate of mid-air mishaps. In August, Boeing pushed back the 787 delivery schedule from a target of the early weeks of 2011 due to a delay in the availability of a Rolls-Royce engine. Ms Gunter said a Rolls-Royce engine had exploded during ground tests in September. It was the second time Boeing has halted 787 test flights, suspending them for “a couple of days” in June, she said, without explaining the reason. US media reported problems with the plane’s tail stabilisers.