For the second time, EL AL grounds new Dreamliner plane
Boeing 787 out of Newark Liberty airport heading to Israel delayed for a day due to technical fault with its radar systems
Stuart Winer is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.
El Al delayed overnight Sunday the flight of one of its new Dreamliner passenger jets from New York to Tel Aviv due to a technical fault with its weather radar systems, the second time since the beginning of the month that one of the jets has been grounded due to problems.
The Boeing 787 plane had been scheduled to fly from Newark Liberty International Airport to Israel on Sunday but passengers were told the plane couldn’t be used and that the flight was put off until the following day. The 200 flyers were put up in a New Jersey hotel overnight while technicians worked to fix the issue with the plane’s radar.
According to the Ynet news site, the plane, named “Rishon Lezion” after the central Israeli city, was put into service at the beginning of October, the second of the new jets that El Al has started operating.
Less than two weeks ago an El Al Dreamliner flight from London Heathrow Airport to Israel was stopped on the tarmac after a crack was noticed in one of the passenger widows. Some 300 travelers were forced to disembark and waited nearly two days until a replacement flight could be arranged for them from Luton Airport.
El Al’s first Dreamliner was put into service in September. The airline has bought 16 of the aircraft. A new plane is planned to arrive in Israel every three months.
Dreamliners first took to the skies in 2009 but the plane has been blighted by technical faults at various airlines including fuel leaks, fires started by batteries, engine issues, a collapsed nose wheel, and concerns over airspeed indicators.
