Where, oh where are all the grounded 787 Dreamliners?
After onboard fires forced the FAA to ground the cutting-edge planes, there are now 50 Dreamliners sitting in 17 airports around the world awaiting the green light to fly again.
There's been no shortage of publicity and investigation surrounding the grounding of the world's 787 Dreamliner fleet after recent battery fires aboard the Boeing airplanes. But there's one question that has gone unanswered: Where are all those Dreamliners?
Thanks to our friends at Airchive.com, we now know where all those planes are sitting as regulators, Boeing, and its battery suppliers work to once again get eager passengers aboard the much-hyped aircraft.
According to Airchive.com, there are currently eight carriers flying Dreamliners -- if you can call having a bunch of planes parked on tarmacs at airports all over the world "flying." The eight are Air India, All Nippon Airways, Ethiopian Airlines, Japan Airlines, LAN Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, Qatar Airways, and United Airlines. Between them, they have 50 Dreamliners, which, of course, are in addition to 787s that Boeing has completed, but which it has yet to deliver.
Airchive.com looked into the location of each of those 50 planes, and determined that they are currently parked at 17 airports across five continents. Twelve Dreamliners are at Tokyo's Haneda Airport, while seven others are at Tokyo's Narita. Five are in Mumbai, India, four are in both Houston and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, three are in Santiago, Chile, and two are at Japan's Takamatsu Airport. The remaining grounded Dreamliner fleet consists of single planes waiting in Bangalore, India; Frankfurt, Germany; Japan's Matsuyama and Kumamoto Airports; Boston; Chicago; Los Angeles; London Heathrow; Warsaw, Poland; and Doha, Qatar.
In addition, Boeing has a number of 787s sitting at its Boeing Field and Paine Field facilities in Seattle and Everett, Wash., respectively.
For now, the carriers have no choice but to keep their Dreamliners parked at these 17 airports and wait for the Federal Aviation Administration and other government agencies to give the thumbs-up to start flying the planes again. No one knows, however, how long that will take.