United Airlines will send Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” flights back to the skies on May 20. USA Today is reporting this date has been pushed up nearly two weeks earlier than the airline’s original plans, which would have restarted flights on May 31.
In case you haven’t heard, all 50 of these state-of-the-art jets were grounded by safety regulators earlier this year because of overheating concerns on the aircraft’s lithium-ion batteries. The grounding hit airlines hard, causing snags in proposed routes and forcing some airlines to lease planes. The St. Louis Business Journal reports Qatar Airways alone lost $200 million in revenue because of the incident.
Although investigators have not found the root cause of the problem, the Federal Aviation Administration officially approved Boeing’s proposed short-term fix for the problem late last month, setting the wheels in motion for the return of passenger flights. Ethiopian Airlines and Qatar Airways have both already resumed Boeing 787 flights, and so far everything seems to have gone along without a hitch, but we’re wondering if the billions of dollars that have already been invested in the planes have caused things to be pushed along a little too quickly.
United will kick off Boing 787 service in the U.S. during an 11 a.m. CT departure from Houston to Chicago O’Hare. Would you book a flight knowing it’s going to be on a Dreamliner, or will you wait a little to see how things pan out?
[Photo credit: Dave Sizer / Wikimedia Commons]
