As a Boeing stockholder I guess it is time to make my feelings known to the board of directors. Telling the press that the leaders of the NTSB and FAA don't know the front of the plane from the back - what kind of
PR people would allow such remarks no matter what personal feelings might be.
The fire on the ground in Boston - apparently there was no on-board fire supression system to control the fire. The Boston fire fighters had difficulty reaching the batteries and in fact sustained an injury getting the the source to extinguish the fire. I have not seen a Boeing statement on this other than say the cabin is pressurized so that if such a problem happened in flight the pressure would push the smoke out so the passengers wouldn't breath it. That remark did not build confidence in me. Stop the freaking fire!
They also said a battery fire could not happen in flight because the APU battery was only used on the ground. Okay, I am not a pilot, but I have read blogs where pilots talk about starting the APU while the plane is still in the air. Is this wrong?
In the ANA airliner the battery was not an APU starting battery. Okay, second fire within a month. This is serious.
Li-Ion batteries are not the only ones that can explode. Anyone who has worked with good oldtime lead-acid batteries is familiar with all of the safety precautions. Remember the old faithful VW Beetle? It's battery was under the rear seat. My boss' wife and daughter were seriously burned by the sulphuric acid when the battery in their car exploded. It is not only new tech that causes problems, but failure to admit problems and resolve them...
Boeing management is remarkably similar to MD with the DC-10. First they have a cargo door fail during fatigue testing. The famous Convair memo that if we don't fix this we are going to kill someone. Then an in-air accident happens over Windsor and again MD ignores saying the plane is safe. It took the plane crash in France killing 346 people before they recognized they had a serious problem. I have a shadow box on my wall with a half dozen pieces from that aircraft reminding me what mistakes can cost.
It will take something like proving that a fire resulting from a battery problem can be safely contained - under ETOPS conditions.