LONDON: Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner jet is back in the news for the wrong reasons.

Runways at London’s Heathrow airport have reopened after a fire on a parked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet.

Arrivals and departures were suspended after the incident at 16:30 BST, a spokesman for the airport said. No passengers were aboard at the time.

A fire broke out inside an  Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet on Friday evening forcing  Heathrow to shut down its runways at peak evening traffic time.

A Heathrow spokesperson says “We can confirm there has been an on-board internal fire involving an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft and the airport’s emergency services are in attendance. The aircraft was parked on a remote parking stand. There were no passengers on board and there are no reported injuries at this time. Arrivals and departures are temporarily suspended while airport fire crews attend to this incident. This is a standard procedure if fire crews are occupied with an incident”.

This is bad news for Boeing.

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launched its review after one battery caught fire in a parked 787 in Boston in January.

A second battery overheated and smoked during a flight in Japan about a week later, prompting regulators to ground the worldwide fleet for four months while  Boeing altered and recertified the battery system.

The incidents caused no injuries or loss of aircraft, but did focus worldwide attention on the 787.

The FAA said it has adopted new testing standards as one lesson from the battery experience.

Around 50 such Dreamliners worldwide were grounded in January 2013 because of battery malfunctions. A large fleet of these aircraft were grounded in US and Japan after similar fires had broken out from their batteries.

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said “Police at Heathrow were alerted to a fire on a plane. Emergency services are in attendance. At this time it is believed no one was on board and there are no reports of any injuries. Fire is being treated as unexplained.”

Boeing recently announced that a comprehensive set of improvements that will add several layers of additional safety features to the lithium-ion batteries on 787 commercial jetliners are in production and could be ready for initial installation within the next few weeks.

New enclosures for 787 batteries also are being built and will be installed in airplanes in the weeks ahead.