Japan Airlines demands compensation from Boeing for Dreamliner grounding

Tokyo, Japan (4E) – Japan Airlines (JAL) said on Monday that it would seek compensation with Boeing, saying that the grounding of its entire 787 Dreamliner fleet would cost the company 700mn yen in lost earnings through March.

The U.S. aircraft maker’s most advanced aircraft has been grounded indefinitely since January after a series of battery problems that included a fire on a JAL flight in Boston. In another incident, an All Nippon Airways (ANA) plane was forced to make an emergency landing when a smoke alarm went off.

Those two cases prompted aviation regulators to ground the 50 Dreamliners that were on service worldwide. Officials from the U.S. and Japan investigating the two incidents have yet to determine that actual cause for the overheating of the lithium-ion batteries, manufactured by a Japanese company.

JAL, which owns the second-largest fleet of 787 Dreamliners with seven, was expecting to receive three more of the same aircraft within the fiscal year.

The company is trying to emerge from last year’s bankruptcy and relisting of its shares that raised the company 663bn yen.

In its earnings report released Monday, JAL said its net profit fell 3.7 per cent to 140.6bn yen in the quarter ended Dec. 31, the first of its financial year. Although sales climbed 3.6 per cent to 942bn yen, it was offset by about 5 per cent rise in operating costs due to higher fuel prices, the company said.

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