European safety agency to ground 787 in line with FAA

PARIS (Reuters) - European safety regulators will follow the United States in ordering the grounding of Boeing 787 Dreamliners amid battery safety concerns, a spokesman said early on Thursday.

The European Aviation Safety Agency typically implements safety directives when they are issued by the country where an aircraft was originally designed, in this case the United States.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday it would temporarily ground 787s after a second incident involving battery failures caused one of the Dreamliner passenger jets to make an emergency landing in Japan.

EASA, which has been in contact with the FAA during a series of 787 incidents, would only fail to implement an FAA safety order if it had already issued one of its own.

"In this case, we have issued no airworthiness directive so far, so the FAA's directive should be endorsed by EASA," the spokesman said.

Poland's LOT Airlines is the only European airline operating the 787 but several have the $207 million jet on order.

(Reporting by Tim Hepher)