Boeing's Dreamliner suffered another blow to its reputation when a leading airline took it out of service after a technical problem.
Qatar Airways made the move involving one of its 787 aircraft two weeks after a fire damaged an Ethiopian Airlines plane parked at Heathrow Airport. An emergency beacon is being investigated as the possible source of that incident.
Qatar and Boeing declined to give further details, but industry sources said they were treating seriously reports the aircraft had been grounded for days after smoke was seen near an electrical panel.
According to reports, the aircraft has not flown since Sunday, an unusually long downtime for a long-haul jet designed to save on fuel bills.
Qatar Airways said no flights had been cancelled. "This is a minor issue for us, and not an incident, so we are not commenting," a spokeswoman said.
A spokeswoman for Boeing said, "We request that you channel all your inquiries to Qatar Airways."
Reports suggested smoke was seen near an electrical compartment while the jet was on the ground in Doha. A failure in a similar bay caused a fire during a test flight in 2010, and three of the jets, including one owned by Qatar Airways, had electrical problems last December.
A fire-brigade supervisor in Doha said the servide did not have any record of an incident with an airport-related call last week.
India's aviation regulator said earlier it had started an investigation after an oven in a 787 operated by Air India overheated causing smoke.
Glasgow Airport recently launched Thomson Dreamliner flights to Mexico.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article