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Flight from Houston to Chicago is first commercial operation since grounding over incidents caused by smoldering batteries
A United 787 flight which took off from Houston on Monday morning and landed in Chicago was the airline's first commercial flight with the Boeing Dreamliner since smoldering batteries forced the plane to be grounded worldwide.
The planes were grounded for four months, because of smoldering batteries on 787s owned by other airlines which led to incidents including an emergency landing of one plane and a fire on another. Federal authorities lifted the grounding order on 19 April but it has taken Boeing and the airlines a few more weeks to fix most of them.
The incidents did not cause any serious injuries, but the January grounding embarrassed Boeing and disrupted schedules at the eight airlines that were flying the planes. The company had delivered 50 Dreamliners worldwide.
United is the only US airline currently flying the 787. The grounding forced it to delay planned international flights and reduced first-quarter earnings by $11m. Other airlines, including Japan Airlines and South America's LATAM Airlines Group, also said profits had taken a hit. LATAM said it still had to make payments on the plane and pay for crews and maintenance. It expects to resume flying soon.
United is planning to use 787s on shorter domestic flights before resuming international flights on 10 June with a new Denver to Tokyo service, as well as temporary Houston to London flights. In August it will add flights to Tokyo, Shanghai and Lagos. Those long international flights are the main reason the 787 exists, as its medium size and fuel efficiency are a good fit for long routes.
