US 787 probe puts spotlight on Arizona battery company
Securaplane, a unit of Britain's Meggitt Plc, first began working on the charger in 2004, but suffered millions of dollars of damages in November 2006 after a lithium-ion battery used in testing exploded and sparked a fire that burned an administrative building to the ground. The US National Transportation Safety Board on Sunday ruled out excess voltage as the cause of a battery fire on the 787 at the Boston airport this month.
It said investigators would travel on Tuesday to Tucson, Arizona, where Securaplane is based, to test and examine the charger and download memory from the controller for the auxiliary power unit. They also plan to travel to Phoenix and carry out similar tests at the site where a unit of United Technologies Corp builds the power unit.
Fiona Greig, a spokeswoman for Securaplane, said the company had been invited to "contribute to the investigation process" and planned to fully support it. "In line with NTSB's practices, however, it would not be helpful to that investigation to comment further," she said in a statement provided to Reuters.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Sunday said it had investigated safety complaints leveled by a former Securaplane employee in 2008 and 2009 but determined that the allegations focused on prototypes that were not ultimately used in the new lightweight
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