Peakcrew
Ian - if this were a "little" incident I wouldn't care. However, I don't consider this to be "little because:
1. There was smoke from an unpowered plane ...
2. ... of a type that has had fire problems before ...
3. ... which had the entire fleet grounded for months ...
4. ... for which there are serious question marks as to the efficacy of the solution, aaaand
5. The actual plane involved took days to repair.
I don't know what you would call "minor", and maybe this falls within your criteria. However, given the
PR nightmare that the 787 is becoming, the silence is counter-productive. Apologists aren't helping the case.
It would appear that you have your information mixed. My understanding was that the aircraft was powered on stand A14 and the crew received a lot of EICAS warnings and shut down. Then there is some confusion with some saying the fire was 'in the cockpit' and others that the fire was 'in a rear electronics bay' the same as the test flight that diverted to Laredo, and others that there actually was no fire.
The 'fire problems' before due batteries and the ELT neither of which seem to be related to either of the reports above.
The entire fleet was grounded due the battery issues - that the authorities FAA, EASA and Japanese agree is fixed. They do not appear to have any serious question marks - perhaps you could elucidate on why the FAA should ground the 787 again? Remember neither the FAA certification people who cleared the aircraft under intense political pressure to 'get it right this time', nor Boeing who imported tens of external electrical and Li-Ion battery experts, can afford to have another battery fire.
The aircraft took several days to return to service, possibly due to the 'experts' running tests to find out why the failure occurred, identifying spares that were needed that may not be normal LRU spares so required sourcing from somewhere, then ensuring that the fault did not recur - As above Boeing cannot afford to get this wrong so with pressure from Boeing senior staff, they may have made an excruciatingly pedantic job of testing, fault identification, repair and regression testing and acceptance testing.
I would think that Boeing is more concerned about satisfying its customers - who are still ordering and staying with orders for the 787, than they are concerned about uninformed members of the peanut gallery like us,
It seems that some aircraft are given a bad name by pundits and critics which can be extremely hard to shake off. The Harrier was rubbish - until it succeeded in the Falklands and is still operating with the US Marines. Similarly the Osprey was a killer, should not be allowed into battle etc etc, but is now the favoured VSTOL of the Marines doing things that no other aircraft can with a survivability that has silenced the critics.
Figures for the 787 are not as bad as some other aircraft albeit with a grounding.