New Delhi, July 13: India’s aviation regulator today said it was closely following developments after a fire broke out in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner parked at London’s Heathrow airport, and waiting to see the cause of the incident before taking any action.

“They have not yet come out with a cause. We are just trying to see what the cause is, then we’ll take further action,” director-general of the civil aviation Arun Mishra said. “We are closely following the developments,” he said.

Yesterday’s fire on a Dreamliner owned by Ethiopian Airlines has sparked an investigation only 11 weeks after regulators ended a worldwide grounding of the same type of aircraft over battery problems.

Air India’s fleet of seven Dreamliner planes was grounded from January to May. If the airline is again forced to ground its Dreamliner fleet, its financial turnaround plan will be hit. Air India suffered operational losses of about Rs 300 crore from the January-May grounding and has asked Boeing for a compensation.

Civil aviation minister Ajit Singh said the airline had set up an internal committee to talk to Boeing on the issue.

As part of its turnaround plan, the national carrier was to begin full-scale global operations to Rome from August, to Milan from October and to Moscow from early next year.

Air India expects delivery of another seven more Dreamliners by December, taking the total to 14. It had ordered a total of 27 Dreamliners.

Investigators today started work to establish the cause of the fire at Heathrow. Britain’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch will lead the investigation, working alongside the US Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board, Ethiopian Airlines and Boeing.

In another development, Ethiopian Airlines, one of Africa’s top five carriers, said it would continue to fly its Dreamliner fleet.

“We have not grounded any of our aircraft,” the carrier said in an emailed statement today.

“The incident at Heathrow happened while the plane was on the ground and had been for more than eight hours and was not related to flight safety,” he said.

Quoting Mark Mangooni, Ethiopian Airlines’ senior manager in Britain, the Financial Times reported that airline staff members had discovered a problem with the aircraft’s air-conditioning system during a routine inspection and saw sparks but no flames.

The report did not make clear when this had happened.

Separately, engineers from Britain’s Thomson Airways were inspecting their own Boeing Dreamliner after it had to turn back during a flight on Friday from Manchester in England to Sanford in Florida because of an unspecified technical issue.

Thomson Airways is one of six European airlines owned by TUI Travel, the world’s largest tour operator.