Good evening sports fans, airline fans, and Boeing 787 meltdown fans.

No, it has not been a good evening for the 787, as both Japan Air Lines and ANA have now grounded their 787 fleets after yet another “battery” incident that necessitated an emergency landing by an ANA aircraft earlier this evening in Japan.

Before this latest development, we had already devoted a fair amount of ink this week to the Boeing 787 problems — including the investigation into the systems and design of the aircraft, which was announced Friday by the FAA.

We also update readers on the NTSB investigation of the fire last week on the Japan Airlines 787 in Boston. And no, those pictures of the burned out Lithium battery are enough to scare the you-know-what out of you. Especially when you factor in the news that it apparently took 40 minutes for fire fighters to finally put out the fire.

Other than continued scary moments with the 787, we also talk a bit this week about the American/US Airways merger — which seems to be inching forward, although we hear the diehards at AMR refuse to give up on the misguided idea that a standalone deal would be preferable, so an announcement may not be as close as we had estimated.
Some people just refuse to accept the fact the world has changed.

Shame.

Meanwhile we all know how this works. Giving up valuable turf is never easy.
Just ask the guys at APA who are obsessed with what their seniority number is going to be. Nothing else matters.

On the international front, Alitalia needs money again, and Kingfisher continues to operate. Kind of.

Meanwhile, German authorities say that Ryanair has been cheating it out of lots of money, by under-reporting landing weights. This one should be interesting to see how it plays out.

We have the November DOT Air Travel Consumer Report this week, plus December traffic and RASM estimates (what the hell happened to Spirit in the fourth quarter, speaking of RASM) and we tell you why we think 2013 is going to be one heck of a good year for the industry.

All this and more — in this week’s issue of PlaneBusiness Banter.