V-Flyer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21038128

Following an emergency landing and evacuation in Japan.

Hopefully these are just early 'teething' problems or I can see it being 2015 or later.

Need to await the actual detail of what happened, but to coin a phrase, there is no smoke without fire and this is proving to be at the very least a PR disaster. What with the FAA investigation and ongoing issues, one does wonder if VS and other airlines' planes will be even further delayed.

At least for VS they're sitting pretty this time not being the EIS customer unlike on the A340.

The BBC now reporting that Japan Airlines has grounded their fleet too.

I'd think that delays to further aircraft are inevitable.

As I hinted in another thread, the vent of battery smoke/fire in flight is extremelty serious.

I predict that there will be an AD to replace these batteries with more traditional (albeit, heavier) batteries or even an alternate.

There is also some doubgts being expressed on various fora (ums!) regarding the quality of wiring and (materials, support, trunking etc), so there may well be some sort of redesign/refit on this as well.

The likelihood of any type of in flight fire means a grounding until route cause is identified - I expect the grounding to be mandated by the FAA shortly...