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Boeing 787 'Dreamliner' Grounded After Emergency Landing

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — Passengers at Los Angeles International Airport will continue to fly Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner jets despite an emergency landing in Japan that forced passengers to slide down evacuation chutes.

KNX 1070's Jon Baird reports federal investigators are looking into the latest setback for a plane called the most technologically advanced aircraft built by Boeing and seen by many industry experts as the future of commercial aviation.

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All Nippon Airways announced it had grounded all 17 of its Dreamliner jets following a flight that landed in western Japan after reported smoke in the cockpit and an odor in the cabin.

Passenger cell phone video showed people jumping down the plane's emergency chutes onto the tarmac. No injuries were reported.

Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were expected to arrive in Japan early Friday morning to also investigate reports of "multiple messages in the cockpit concerning the battery and other systems that were affected."

Officials with United Airlines said they will continue to fly 787s out of LAX, even if some passengers are less than confident in the plane's reliability.

"When I heard about it in the news, I thought, 'I'm hoping I'm not flying a 787'," said one man. "It's like anything else: the new thing on the block, you gotta work out the bugs."

But others used that same logic to defend their view that the Dreamliner is still a work in progress.

"Every new airplane has bugs to get out," another man said.

At least four separate Dreamliner flights were scheduled to either arrive or depart from LAX on Wednesday.

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