US FAA to loosen policy to help Boeing 787 Dreamliner

The role of the US Federal Aviation Administration in that it is both the promoter and protector of aviation in the United States, has always produced contradictory situations.

Dominic Gates of the Seattle Times is reporting that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner cannot meet the Federal Aviation Administration's current stringent standards for preventing sparks inside the fuel tank during a lightning strike, and the agency now calls those requirements "impractical" and proposes to loosen them.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has quietly decided to loosen stringent fuel-tank safety regulations written after the 1996 fuel-tank explosion that destroyed flight TWA 800 off the coast of New York state.

The FAA proposes to relax the safeguards for preventing sparks inside the fuel tank during a lightning strike, standards the agency now calls "impractical" and Boeing says its soon-to-fly 787 Dreamliner cannot meet.

Instead of requiring three independent protection measures for any feature that could cause sparking, the revised policy would allow some parts to have just one safeguard.

Download the proposed policy shift.

Read the article.