Andrea Shalal-Esa Reuters
6:06 p.m. CST, January 20, 2013
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - Tucson, Arizona-based Securaplane Technologies Inc, which
makes a charger for batteries used on the Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner, on
Sunday said it would support an investigation into battery issues that
have grounded the new planes.
Securaplane, a unit of Britain's
Meggitt Plc, first began working on the charger in 2004, but suffered
millions of dollars of damages in November 2006 after a lithium-ion
battery used in testing exploded and sparked a fire that burned an
administrative building to the ground.
The U.S. National
Transportation Safety Board on Sunday ruled out excess voltage as the
cause of a battery fire on the 787 at the Boston airport this month.
It
said investigators would travel on Tuesday to Tucson, Arizona, where
Securaplane is based, to test and examine the charger and download
memory from the controller for the auxiliary power unit. They also plan
to travel to Phoenix and carry out similar tests at the site where a
unit of United Technologies Corp builds the power unit.
Fiona
Greig, a spokeswoman for Securaplane, said the company had been invited
to "contribute to the investigation process" and planned to fully
support it.
"In line with the NTSB's practices, however, it would
not be helpful to that investigation to comment further," she said in a
statement provided to Reuters.
The U.S. Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) on Sunday said it had investigated safety
complaints leveled by a former Securaplane employee in 2008 and 2009 but
determined that the allegations focused on prototypes that were not
ultimately used in the new lightweight airliner.
Shubhayu
Chakraborty, president of Securaplane, earlier told Reuters that his
company's lithium-ion battery charger was currently only in use on the
Boeing 787, although it is developing different systems for use on other
aircraft.
Securaplane is building a lithium-ion battery system
for the KC-390 military transport plane being developed by Brazil's
Embraer SA, which is due to have its first flight in 2014. Embraer
declined comment.
The company is also developing backup batteries
for the Embraer Legacy 450 and 500 business jets and will make the
lithium battery for the next-generation Eurocopter EC-135 helicopter
being developed by EADS, according to the company's website.
The
charger is part of a complex system that uses a lithium-ion battery made
by Japan's GS Yuasa Corp and electrical systems made by France's Thales
to provide start up power for an auxiliary power unit, which is built
by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies.
A separate
lithium-ion battery, which also uses a Securaplane charger and Thales
electrical power conversion equipment, is used as a main battery backup
for flight critical systems, according to Boeing.
The NTSB's
decision to travel to Securaplane's facility sparked fresh questions
about a fire that destroyed an administrative building there in 2006.
Boeing
spokesman Marc Birtel said an investigation into the 2006 fire at the
Securaplane facility was later determined to have been caused by an
improper test set-up, not the battery design. He declined comment on the
current 787 investigations.
After the fire, a former Securaplane
employee named Michael Leon filed a claim for federal whistleblower
protection, alleging that he was fired for raising security concerns
about the design of the charger and discrepancies between assembly
documents for the chargers and the finished chargers.
A federal
administrative law judge dismissed Leon's suit in 2011, saying the
company had proven he was fired for repeated misconduct, not any safety
complaints. The judge did not rule on Leon's alleged safety concerns.
Greig confirmed the suit was filed and dismissed, but said the company could not discuss personnel issues.
Leon could not be reached for comment.
FAA
spokeswoman Laura Brown said the FAA investigated Leon's complaints,
but determined that the battery charging units that he addressed were
prototypes, and none were installed in Boeing 787 aircraft.
"Our
reviews also determined Securaplane's production of a particular printed
circuit board complied with FAA requirements," Brown said.
(Reporting
By Andrea Shalal-Esa; additional reporting by Brad Haynes in Brazil,
and Noeleen Walder in New York; Editing by Maureen Bavdek and Marguerita
Choy)
Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com
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