RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: Investigators in London are continuing to probe the cause of last Friday's fire onboard a parked Boeing 787 - the plane known as the Dreamliner. They're examining what role the emergency locator transmitter might have played.</s>RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST: That device is made by Honeywell and as NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports, the company has sent technical experts to assist in the investigation.</s>WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: The emergency locator transmitter, or ELT, sends out a digitally encoded signal after a crash and, says aviation analyst Scott Hamilton...</s>SCOTT HAMILTON: Search teams would rely on the signals emitted from the ELTs, to locate the airplane.</s>WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: These emergency beacons are on every commercial jet. In a statement, Honeywell says its ELT was certified by the FAA in 2008, and there haven't been any reported incidents with the device. It's powered by a very small, non-rechargeable, lithium manganese battery. It's normally quiet and not doing anything while a plane is parked.</s>WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: This investigation comes roughly three months after the 787s were returned to service after being grounded because of serious problems with a different kind of battery. Investigators have said those lithium ion batteries are not implicated in this incident.</s>WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: Aviation expert Hans Weber says while we still don't know how this fire started, humans have been to blame for fires on other parked jets.</s>HANS WEBER: Somebody smoking a cigarette illegally on the aircraft and not extinguishing the cigarette properly, or somebody leaving something on the hot plate, or somebody doing a repair job and causing a fire to smolder - without noticing it.</s>WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: Investigators are expected to have a least some answers in a matter of days.</s>WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: Wendy Kaufman, NPR News.
In London, investigators are still probing the cause of a fire last week on a parked Boeing 787, known as the Dreamliner. One area of interest is the emergency locator transmitter. The device is made by Honeywell, which has sent a technical team to assist in the investigation.