FAA may shorten flying time of Boeing 787: sources

By Andrea Shalal-Esa and Mari Saito

WASHINGTON/TOKYO (Reuters) - As Boeing works to regain permission for its 787 Dreamliner to resume flights, the company faces what could be a costly new challenge: a temporary ban on some of the long-distance, trans-ocean journeys that the jet was intended to fly.

Aviation experts and government officials say the Federal Aviation Administration may shorten the permitted flying time of the 787 on certain routes when it approves a revamped battery system. The plane was grounded worldwide two months ago after lithium-ion batteries overheated on two separate aircraft.

Losing extended operations, or ETOPS, would deal a blow to Boeing and its airline customers by limiting use of the fuel-saving jet, designed to lower costs on long-distance routes that don't require the capacity of the larger Boeing 777. Such a loss could even lead to cancellation of some routes.

"If the FAA approves (only) over-land operations it would be a very damaging blow to the 787 program," said Scott Hamilton, an aviation analyst with Leeham Co in Seattle.

"Depending on how long that restriction remains in place, it would completely undermine the business case for the airplane, which was to be able to do these long, thin intercontinental routes" over water, he said.

Grounding the 787 already has cost Boeing an estimated $450 million (296.7 million pounds) in lost income and compensation payments to airlines. Further restrictions on the 787's range could send the airlines' claims - and Boeing's costs - higher.

Until it was grounded on January 16, the 787 was permitted to fly routes that ranged as much as three hours away from an airport. Boeing has asked the FAA to extend that range to 5-1/2 hours. That change would enable airlines to fly many more routes across remote areas such as the North Pole.

Now the jet faces the potential temporary loss of its ETOPS approval or a roll-back to two hours, according to government officials and aviation experts.

"It is completely within expectations for FAA to limit ETOPS for the 787," one regulatory source in Japan told Reuters. He said that reducing the range to two hours would force Japanese airlines to fly more circuitous routes, burning up more fuel and cutting efficiency.

A former senior U.S. government official said there was "a distinct possibility" that Boeing could win the battle over FAA flight certification for the battery only to lose permission for extended operations - at least temporarily.

An FAA spokesperson said it was too early to discuss ETOPS approval since Boeing's battery fix was still being tested.

"It's really premature to talk about what ETOPS certification we would give them right now," said the spokesperson. "We'll be in a better position to answer questions like that after we get through all this battery testing."

Boeing referred questions to the FAA. During a recent news conference in Japan, Boeing executives said there had not been any conversations with regulators about extended range operations. They said the proposed certification plan did not foresee further limitations once the plane was allowed to resume flight operations.

The issue is heating up as Boeing nears the end of testing the new battery system, designed to prevent the meltdowns that occurred in January. Boeing executives say the FAA could approve the new battery system within weeks. The first flight test of the system took place Monday, and a second, final test flight is expected in coming days, Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said.

Analysts and industry executives say any decision to limit the flying time of the new aircraft would have serious consequences.

The change would not rule out all international routes, but some specific routes, such as Japan Airlines Co's Tokyo-to-Boston flight, might have to be cancelled, said the Japanese regulatory source.

The 787's biggest customers so far include All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines, which fly extended routes to the United States and Europe, and Qatar Airways. In the U.S., United Airlines is the only carrier to have taken delivery of 787s. The airlines declined requests for comment on how loss of ETOPS could affect operations.

A step-by-step return to full, extended flight would give regulators more time to study the effectiveness of Boeing's battery fix, and could help the Obama administration prove that it was making good on Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's promise to ensure the plane was "1,000-percent" safe, some experts said.

It would also address concerns voiced by Japanese aviation regulatory authorities in recent weeks.

Nor is it without precedent. Until the late 1980s, the FAA required airlines to fly a certain number of hours over land before it approved extended-range operations over water or remote areas. It started granting permission for those flights in tandem with flight certification when engine safety improved.

But the highly electrical nature of the 787 has raised new questions, said another former U.S. official, noting that the importance of the lithium-ion batteries for the plane's operation made it a bigger risk factor than past batteries.

"In the past, if you lost a battery, or a battery malfunctioned, it wasn't that big of a deal," said that former U.S. official.

"But if Boeing's battery is needed to start the engine - and that battery is susceptible to fire - isn't that a turn back condition? Isn't that something you have to go land at an airport to address? That's the question."

(Additional reporting by Tim Kelly in Tokyo and Tim Hepher in Paris.; Editing by Alwyn Scott and Steve Orlofsky)

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Boeing manager mentors 'Barefoot Bandit'

SEATAC, Wash. (AP) — Jonathan Standridge and Colton Harris-Moore made an odd couple as they sat together in the visiting room of a Washington state prison one day last spring.

Standridge, 57, is a project manager at Boeing, one of the world's most important aviation companies. Harris-Moore, 21, is the "Barefoot Bandit," a world-famous airplane thief who is serving a seven-year sentence after a sensational run from the law in stolen boats, cars and planes.

As it turned out, they had a lot to discuss. Aerospace design. Books. And second chances.

"What have you heard about me?" Harris-Moore asked, Standridge recalled.

"I've read all about the 'Barefoot Bandit,'" Standridge said. Harris-Moore replied: "That's not who I am."

Ever since, Standridge has returned to the prison in Aberdeen, a two-hour drive from his lakeside home in the Seattle suburb of SeaTac, at least once a month, hoping to have a positive influence on what has been a bleak, if sometimes thrilling, young life, and to repay a favor someone once did for him.

"This is a young man that is fully engaged in the rehabilitation process that we in society ask of those folks who are in our prison system," said Standridge, who has tutored Harris-Moore in the airplane business and a lot more.

The progress is threatened by new burglary and theft counts that could add to Harris-Moore's sentence, he said.

Standridge was lining up other aviation specialists to meet with Harris-Moore when the prisoner was transferred last month to the Skagit County Jail. Prosecuting Attorney Rich Weyrich said he filed the charges because the plea agreement other prosecutors reached with Harris-Moore in 2011 was too lenient.

Harris-Moore grew up poor on Camano Island north of Seattle, raised by an alcoholic mother and a series of her felon boyfriends — a feral childhood he wouldn't wish on his "darkest enemies," he once wrote to a judge. He earned his first conviction at age 12, in 2004, for stolen property, and things only got worse. After he walked away from a halfway house in 2008, he embarked on a two-year burglary spree, breaking into unoccupied vacation homes and stores, and stealing money and food.

Some of the crimes were committed barefoot, and by 2010, he had rocketed to international notoriety as he stole small airplanes in the Northwest, flew them with no formal training and landed them with various degrees of success. A few were only lightly damaged, but two crashes were so severe he could have been killed.

His final run was a cross-country dash to an airport in Indiana, where he stole a plane, crashed it in the Bahamas, and was arrested in a hail of bullets.

He pleaded guilty to dozens of charges, apologized, and sold the rights to his story to FOX, which plans a movie. Any proceeds will repay his victims.

That, Standridge tells him, is the past — useful in determining how we got where we are, but not what we will become.

A chance encounter led Standridge to Harris-Moore. At last year's Seattle International Film Festival, he met Lance Rosen, Harris-Moore's media attorney. As they made small talk, Rosen grew more interested in Standridge's work and finally asked: Would he be interested in mentoring Harris-Moore?

Intrigued, Standridge sent Harris-Moore a letter in prison. Harris-Moore wrote back, and Standridge was hooked.

"The key ingredient I look for in something like this is somebody who has passion — passion for life, passion to move forward," Standridge said. "It immediately came off the pages of this first letter that we had a highly motivated young man who was looking to change his life."

Stocky and well-spoken, with short, receding white hair and a salt-and-pepper goatee, Standridge is married and has a 19-year-old daughter. He came from a background very different from Harris-Moore. He was born in Oklahoma City to a loving, engaged family and later moved to Illinois. Nevertheless, as a young man he was directionless and fell into heavy drug use, he said. After wasting most of his 20s, he enlisted in the Navy in 1984.

At boot camp, he got caught with drugs and instead of sending him home, the Navy captain in charge of the base offered him a second chance — warning Standridge that he'd be following his career.

Standridge spent seven years in the Navy, four on the flight deck of the U.S.S. Constellation aircraft carrier, where watching the F-14 fighter jets fostered a love of airplanes that began in boyhood, when his father would take him to watch the planes at Will Rodgers World Airport in Oklahoma City.

He went on to graduate from Seattle University in 1997, the same year he began working for Boeing. He stresses that his involvement with Harris-Moore is on his own time, not a company-sanctioned initiative.

At their first meeting, Harris-Moore walked into the visiting room amid a line of other convicts. Sunburned from being in the prison yard, he wanted to know why Standridge was taking such an interest in him. Standridge told him the story of the Navy captain.

"Even today I think about it. Without that second chance, I would not be where I am today," he said. "That is what I'm passing on to Colt, the opportunity for that future."

He made Harris-Moore promise that he'll repay the favor when he gets his life re-established. They shook hands on it.

While he declined to get into some specifics about their conversations, Standridge said Harris-Moore badly wants to get a pilot's license and hopes one day to design prototype aircraft. Harris-Moore has said he wanted to get an aeronautical engineering degree while in prison. They talk about planes, corporate governance, management techniques, body language, and books — Steve Jobs' authorized biography was a favorite of Harris-Moore's, he said.

Only rarely and in passing do they discuss his time on the run. When Harris-Moore learned Standridge grew up in the Midwest, they commiserated about the size of the mosquitos he encountered on his way to Indiana.

Sometimes Harris-Moore draws his ideas for plane design on a piece of notepaper to show Standridge.

"He is in a very good place. He likes where he's headed. He likes the person he has become," he said.

___

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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United removing Boeing 787 from flight plans

(Reuters) - United Continental Holdings said on Thursday it was taking Boeing Co's grounded 787 Dreamliner out of its flying plans through June 5, except for a Denver-to-Tokyo route scheduled for a tentative launch in May.

United's decision came as a Japanese investigation of a fuel leak on a Dreamliner operated by Japan Airlines Co Ltd (JAL) indicated the cause to be a coating around the mechanism that controls fuel movement between tanks.

Japanese officials launched the investigation after two fuel leaks on the JAL 787, just days before authorities around the world grounded the new lightweight passenger jets over battery failures that sparked fires on two planes in January.

Japanese authorities still have not found the cause of the battery issue.

Airlines operating 787s are setting schedules for coming months while still uncertain about when the plane will be able to resume service following the fleet's grounding five weeks ago.

Boeing is due to meet with the head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Friday to present measures designed to prevent further battery failures, a source told Reuters, even though the root cause of the electrical problem has not been determined.

United spokeswoman Christen David said in a statement on Thursday that the carrier's Denver to Tokyo Narita International route, originally set to start March 31, had been postponed to May 12.

The launch would ultimately depend on a successful resolution of the safety incidents that have grounded the 787. Other service with the 787 won't resume until after June 5, David said.

"We are taking the 787 out of our schedule through June 5, except for Denver-Narita, which will tentatively launch on May 12," United's statement said.

MAINTAINING DIALOGUE

Boeing said it was maintaining communication with United as the plane maker develops a plan to resume 787 service. "We deeply regret the impact the recent events have had on the schedule for United and their customers," Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel said in an emailed comment.

United's statement doesn't mean that the 787 won't be ready to fly again before June 5, said Carter Leake, an analyst at BB&T Capital Markets.

Rather, it means United will not put the jet into service before then. If the plane is available sooner but United cannot use it on its scheduled routes, Boeing likely would have to pay United compensation that Leake estimates at about $800,000 a month, based on lease rates.

"This does not tell you that Boeing's plane is grounded until June," he said. "It tells you that Boeing's costs to United could be as if it's grounded until June."

A "superbox" to contain the battery or some other fix "might come sooner, but United is not paying" to have the jet until after June 5, he added.

In a similar move, Poland's national airline LOT said last week that it would not use the 787 before October and that it is seeking compensation from Boeing .

"Airlines don't make money while their planes are on the ground," said Morningstar airline analyst Basili Alukos.

United is the only U.S. carrier currently operating the 787 and has six of the planes, worth $207 million apiece at list prices. JAL and All Nippon Airways (ANA) have nearly half of the 50 jets delivered to airlines so far.

Japan's Transport Ministry said it believed the manufacturing process led to deficiencies in the way electrical-insulating coating was applied to the mechanism that opened and closed the fuel-tank valve.

Investigators also found foreign matter on a switch that operated the same mechanism, causing it to send a signal that the valve was closed when it was still half open -- leading to the leak.

The ministry said four Dreamliners in Japan, two from JAL and two from ANA, might be affected by the manufacturing process.

(Reporting by Karen Jacobs; Additional reporting by Alwyn Scott and James Topham; Editing by Bernard Orr and Stephen Coates)

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