ANA Holdings Inc., the biggest operator of Boeing Co. 787s, aims to resume scheduled flights of the jet on June 1, Chief Executive Officer Shinichiro Ito said Sunday.
Ito, who flew on the airline’s initial test flight Sunday with Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Ray Conner after completion of a fix to the battery system, said Tokyo-based ANA won’t change plans for introducing the Dreamliner to its fleet. It expects to receive 10 more planes in the year to March and will assign the next delivery to expanding domestic routes.
ANA faces a challenge in luring back customers to an aircraft grounded for more than three months after lithium-ion batteries on two planes overheated and melted. Saturday’s 787 test flight by Ethiopian Airlines Enterprise was the first since the Jan. 16 grounding, the longest for a large commercial plane by U.S. and Japanese regulators since jet airliners began flying in the 1950s.
