Boeing Dreamliner joins A380 in the dock after fire

The reputation of advanced aviation has taken another knock with the news that a Boeing 787 Dreamliner was forced to make an emergency landing yesterday when a fire broke out in the cabin during a test flight.

The plane was on a routine test flight from Yuma, Arizona, approaching Laredo, Texas, when the fire started. As a result of the emergency, Boeing has halted all other test flights "until we better understand the incident".

The revelation comes as questions are still being asked about the safety of the Airbus A380 superjumbo following the mid-air explosion last week which forced a Qantas plane to land on three engines.

With the Qantas fleet of six A380s still grounded, and Singapore Airlines replacing engines on three if its A380s, both of these new-generation passenger jets are now in the dock.

The Dreamliner (above), which is yet to come into service, is a smaller plane than the A380 and claims vast improvements in fuel efficiency over similarly sized aircraft currently in service.

Both planes have similar speeds (around 600mph) and range (around 9,400 miles). But Boeing has gambled on an airline industry that wants small, Fully-laden planes that are fast to turn around, while Airbus is hoping carriers will prefer its big-is-better superjumbo option.

The superjumbo boasts a passanger capacity of 853 to the Dreamliner's 330 - which means airports are having to upgrade equipment to meet its supersize requirements.

The obvious size difference between the planes hasn't stopped comparisons being made between the two new models, with analysts speculating over which manufacturer has read the market correctly.

It will be difficult to tell until the Dreamliner enters service, but Boeing's plane is already the fastest-selling wide-body airliner in history, with 847 orders, despite being nearly two years late.

A full investigation will be mounted in due course, but yesterday's fire may have started in the plane's rear electronics bay. The Dreamliner's headline innovations are its lightweight carbon-fibre composite air frame and advanced electrical system.

The latter has meant the two engine suppliers, Rolls Royce and GE, have had to update their designs to provide functions electrically that were previously performed by excess air - 'bleed air' - from the engine.

Rolls Royce has spent the past week fending off claims that there is something intrinsically wrong with its Trent 900 engine - the model that exploded last week and which has since been found by both Qantas and Singapore Airlines to show signs of "oil where oil shouldn't be".

It won't help that a Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engine was powering the Dreamliner that caught fire, though Boeing says there is no reason to believe the engine was at fault.

The Dreamliner involved in yesterday's incident was painted in the colours of Japan's All Nippon Airways, which will be the first airline to receive the 787 when it is finally launched, supposedly in the first quarter of 2011. ·