Dreamliner becoming a nightmare

JAPAN'S All Nippon Airways plans to cancel at least 379 flights in February due to the worldwide grounding of Boeing's Dreamliner 787, local media have reported.

The cancellations - 245 flights on domestic routes over 12 days from February 1 and 134 on international routes over 18 days - are expected to affect about 24,300 passengers.

The total number of ANA cancellations since a January 16 emergency landing in western Japan will now amount to 838, with 82,620 travellers affected.

International flights expected to be hit next month include those from Tokyo's Haneda and Narita airports to Frankfurt, San Jose, Seattle and Seoul.

Boeing's cutting-edge new planes had a series of glitches this month, prompting a global alert from the US Federal Aviation Administration that led to the worldwide grounding of all 50 operational 787s.

An aviation analyst at the Teal Group, Richard Aboulafia, said officials at some of the airlines had become more nervous in private. He said the industry's worries about how long it would take to find the problem and fix the planes increased last week after a National Transportation Safety Board briefing.