SAN JOSE — Six months after battery problems grounded Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliners, All Nippon Airways is scheduled Saturday to resume its 787 flights from Mineta San Jose International Airport to Tokyo’s Narita International Airport.
All 17 of ANA’s 787s have been retrofitted with new batteries to replace the original lithium-ion batteries after a fire broke out on a parked Japan Airlines 787 in Boston in January and smoke filled an ANA 787 midflight in Japan a week later.
ANA’s fleet has been cleared to fly by U.S. and Japanese aviation officials, according to ANA spokeswoman Nao Gunji.
The 787s can carry 112 passengers in economy class and 46 in business class and typically fly with a flight crew of 15 people, Gunji said.
Saturday’s flight out of Mineta departs at 1:05 p.m. and arrives in Narita at 4:10 p.m. Sunday.
ANA will have other flights on Sundays, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Daily service is scheduled to begin in September.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner was built mainly from carbon-fiber composite material and was expected to launch a new era in airline fuel efficiency and passenger comfort tailored for smaller airports such as Mineta.
Japanese carriers already had grounded their 787s when the FAA in January ordered the lone U.S. Dreamliner carrier, United Airlines, to stop flying its six 787s.
U.S. airline analysts had told this newspaper that the cost to retrofit a Dreamliner was estimated at $400,000 per plane — a cost that some airliners planned to recoup through Boeing. ANA declined to reveal the cost to upgrade its 787s, or say whether it planned to recover its expenses through Boeing.
Contact Dan Nakaso at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/dannakaso.
