US authority allows Boeing to conduct Dreamliner test flights
London, Feb 8 : Aerospace giant Boeing has got permission from The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to carry out test flights of 787 Dreamliner planes.
The entire fleet of 787s was grounded last month after a battery on one plane caught fire, while a malfunction forced another to make an emergency landing.
According to the BBC, the FAA said the test flights would help collect data about battery performance "while the aircraft is airborne".
Marc Birtel, a spokesman for Boeing added that such data will "support the continuing investigations into the cause of the recent 787 battery incidents".
According to the report, the FAA said it had asked Boeing to conduct extensive pre-flight testing and inspections and that the flights would be conducted "in defined airspace over unpopulated areas".
In a separate development another US regulator, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said the tests carried out by Boeing on the Dreamliner batteries, when they were first certified, missed the high risk of fire.
It said that Boeing's tests underestimated the frequency of 'smoke events' in the lithium ion batteries.
The tests also failed to spot that overheating in one battery cell could cascade to the others, causing a fire, the NTSB added.