Lithium Power Seen Trumping Risk in Aircraft Battery Use
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If the lithium battery-fed fire that scorched a parked and empty Boeing Co. Dreamliner jet in London had occurred over the ocean, hours from an airport, the result could have been catastrophic.
The July 12 blaze on the Ethiopian Airlines Enterprise 787 was in a difficult-to-reach space and couldn’t be put out by the plane’s fire extinguishers, according to U.K. regulators. Only one-third of airliners with such hidden fires can be expected to land safely, an earlier U.K. study concluded.