An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 has made its first flight since
suffering structural damage in a fire at London’s Heathrow Airport in
July.
Boeing test pilots took ET-AOP on a test flight from
Heathrow on December 21, flying racetrack patterns over the North Sea at
39,000 ft. The aircraft was due to land at Manston Airport in the
afternoon and then return to Heathrow later in the day. It is not clear
whether more flights will be required, but Boeing is hopeful of
returning the aircraft to passenger operations in the coming weeks.
The
fire, which erupted in one of the 787’s Honeywell-made emergency
locator transmitters (ELT) while the aircraft was parked between flights
on July 12, scorched the crown of the fuselage forward of the tail fin
leading edge and caused major smoke damage to the interior as a whole.
Engineers
erected scaffolding and cranes to work on the aircraft in the cargo
cul-de-sac of Heathrow where the aircraft has been stranded since the
fire on July 12. They removed the aircraft’s vertical stabilizer in
order to enable a large area of the Section 47 crown to be cut out and
replaced with a new section.
As well as the major structural
repair, which is understood to be one of the largest and most
significant ever undertaken on a composite fuselage primary structure,
the refurbishment is also believed to involve complete replacement of
the interior paneling, sidewalls, overhead fixtures, lining, seats and
other fittings.
ET-AOP (L/N44) was the first 787 to restart operations in mid-April following the fleet-wide grounding over battery issues.
Aviationweek
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