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| Dreamliner 787 Heathrow fire 'may be caused by short circuit' | Dreamliner 787 Heathrow fire 'may be caused by short circuit' |
| (34 minutes later) | |
| A fire on a parked Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet at Heathrow Airport two years ago was probably caused by a short circuit, air accident investigators have said. | A fire on a parked Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet at Heathrow Airport two years ago was probably caused by a short circuit, air accident investigators have said. |
| The fire was likely to have been started by two bare wires touching in a piece of location equipment, the UK Air Accidents Investigations Branch said. | The fire was likely to have been started by two bare wires touching in a piece of location equipment, the UK Air Accidents Investigations Branch said. |
| It then spread through the cabin and burnt through the fuselage. | It then spread through the cabin and burnt through the fuselage. |
| Investigators recommended tighter testing and certification of devices. | Investigators recommended tighter testing and certification of devices. |
| The piece of equipment that caught fire - the Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) - was located near the back of the plane, and was made by Honeywell. | |
| The battery-powered transmitter is designed to detect unusual deceleration, such as the force produced by a crash, and to transmit a distress signal. | |
| The device in the 787 had positive and negative cables that were too long to fit into the box housing the device, and so ended up touching one another. | |
| Testing had predicted that the worst reaction from a short circuit would be the batteries running down. | |
| Unfortunately, what actually happened was what investigators called "a thermal runaway" - a fire that spread from one battery cell to the next. | |
| On the ground, the skin of the aircraft was pierced by the heat and the flames. |