On Monday, July 1, 2013, Japan Airlines company (JAL) said that it has launched a new daily round-trip service from Narita airport to Helsinki. For this route, the airline will be using its Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet.
On February 25, 2013, JAL was planning to begin flying to the Finnish capital by using the fuel-efficient plane, but the flight had to be delayed after regulators grounded all 787s. The entire fleet had to be grounded when one of the flights had to make an emergency landing on January 16, 2013, due to a battery-related problem.
JAL and All Nippon Airways Co. (ANA) are the world?s largest operators of 787 and the fleet was put back to service on June 1, 2013. Despite the repairs and the restart of the service, certain flights are still facing minor problems which caused cancellations and delays. The carriers were offered a replacement of the lithium-ion batteries, after which the fleet was back in service.
The carriers said that since then, they have not experienced any major problems, at least when it comes to batteries. This is also the second international route that was launched by JAL and the company has relisted its stock on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in September 2012, after its bankruptcy in 2010.
