Boeing pushes battery workaround with no 787 Dreamliner fix in sight

Boeing will propose to regulators as early as this week a short-term fix to bolster the 787's defenses in case of battery fires like those that have kept the jet grounded for the past month. The goal is to get the planes flying passengers again, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter, while Boeing works on a comprehensive redesign of the lithium-ion battery system that could take nine months or more to implement. The interim fix includes a heavy-duty titanium or steel containment box around the battery cells, and high-pressure evacuation tubes that, in the event of a battery fire, would vent any gases directly to the outside of the jet. Boeing's approach implicitly acknowledges that four weeks after two batteries overheated -- one catching fire on the ground, the other smoldering in flight -- investigators have still not pinpointed the cause. That leaves Boeing little option for now but to engineer a solution that will better contain any such incident an