Qatar Airways Grounds Boeing 787 Dreamliner Due To Technical Trouble Amid New Reports Of Damaged Components

Qatar Airways, on Friday, grounded one of its Boeing 787 Dreamliners, citing a “minor” technical trouble -- the latest in a series of recurring mishaps that has been troubling the aircraft for the past several months.

Qatar Airways said the aircraft was taken out of service, adding: “This is a minor issue for us, and not an incident, so we are not commenting,” Reuters reported. Sources who spoke to Reuters said smoke was reported near an electrical compartment while the plane was on the ground in Doha.

Earlier on Friday, India’s civil aviation regulator announced an investigation into an incident, on Wednesday, aboard a Dreamliner operated by Air India Ltd.

The jetliner, which was flying from the capital, New Delhi, to the eastern Indian city of Kolkata, experienced smoke in a galley-oven area, which, Air India said, was caused by the overheating of the oven.

Also on Friday, United Airlines said it found a pinched wire in an emergency beacon on one of its Dreamliners, shortly after similar damage was reported by Japan’s ANA Holdings Inc., which operates the world’s biggest fleet of Boeing 787s.

The reports of faulty wires, which are linked to a fire earlier this month aboard a Dreamliner in London, came a day after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, issued a directive to Boeing to remove or inspect the Dreamliners’ emergency beacons, made by Honeywell International Inc. (NYSE:HON).

The FAA issued the directive after UK investigators found that the fire, which broke out on July 12 aboard a 787 operated by Ethiopian Airlines -- while the jet was stationed at a remote stand at London's Heathrow airport -- was caused by two wires pinched together in a beacon inside the aircraft.

The recent problems are not linked to the jetliner’s lithium-ion batteries that overheated and prompted the FAA to temporarily cancel 787 services worldwide for four months starting on Jan. 16.

Boeing redesigned the battery system, which won FAA approval, before eight worldwide Dreamliner operators resumed flights in April, May and June.