More Boeing Bad News

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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#681 Post by PHXPhlyer »

United Airlines orders 270 jets, its biggest aircraft purchase ever

This goes in the "Boeing Bad News" thread only because they are probably selling these Max's at just over costs just to get the order.


https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/29/business ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)United Airlines on Tuesday announced orders to buy 270 jets, the largest aircraft purchase in the company's history and the biggest order by any airline in about a decade.

The list price for the 270 jets totals about $35 billion. Airlines typically pay only a fraction of list prices — and because this is still not a good time for aircraft sales, United is paying far below half of the list price.
United is likely getting an especially significant discount, on the 200 Boeing (BA) 737 Max jets that makes up the bulk of the order. The rest of the order is for 70 Airbus (EADSF) A321neo aircraft.
The buy is another sign that airlines see a recovery from the pandemic on the horizon.
On Monday, United (UAL) told investors that it expects to post an adjusted pre-tax profit in July, the first sign of profitability by United or any major airline since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Demand for leisure travel is nearly back to normal, helping to lift fares, even if more lucrative business travel and international flights are still only a fraction of what they were before the pandemic.
"It's a sign that United is a savvy airplane buyer," said Ron Epstein, aerospace analyst for Bank of America. "I'm certain they're getting a good deal on Max's. But If they didn't feel reasonably good about the return of market for flying, they wouldn't be doing it."
Replacing smaller planes
United will use most of the jets ordered Tuesday to replace 200 smaller regional jets that carry about 50 passengers each, allowing it to increase capacity without adding flights at airports such as Newark and San Francisco, which limit each airline's takeoffs and landings. It will also replace about 100 older full-size planes.
It should be welcome news to passengers, who tend to dislike the smaller planes, CEO Scott Kirby said in a presentation to investors Tuesday.
"We're trying to fly 50-seat regional jets between Chicago and Dallas or between Newark and Atlanta. And we're trying to compete with people that have a much better product," CEO Scott Kirby said in a presentation to investors Tuesday. "We had no chance to compete effectively. This order is about remedying that and creating a domestic network that has a product that our customers like."
Currently, United said, regional jets are being used for a third of domestic flights. Tuesday's purchases will cut that figure down to 10%.
Expectations for rebound in business and international travel
Including Tuesday's orders, and previous orders it had on the books, United now has orders for 500 new jets coming in the next few years, with 40 planes — many of them widebody jets used on long-haul routes — due to be delivered next year and 138 in 2023 alone.
It's a stunning change from a year ago, when lack of demand forced United and all other airlines worldwide to park planes and halt aircraft purchases and deliveries. This year's deliveries of new jets will still be a fraction of pre-pandemic levels. But, like United, Southwest and Delta (DAL) have also announced plane purchases in recent months.
"What a difference a year makes," Kirby said. But he said United has been planning for the recovery and discussing purchases since last summer, adding that "this is about where we expected to be" at this point.
Kirby told investors business travel is accelerating, and while it's still down 60% from pre-pandemic levels, that's an improvement from a 90% drop earlier this year. International travel is still limited, with many countries still restricting cross-border travel, but Kirby and other United executives are expecting record international travel next year.
Still, plane deliveries will still be slow this year and next. United said in a filing Tuesday that it expects the first of the planes in Tuesday's order to arrive in 2023. The order includes 150 of the newest version of the 737 Max, the Max 10, which had its first test flight earlier this month and isn't yet certified to fly passengers.
Plans to add 25,000 jobs
United plans to add about 25,000 jobs over the next five years to the 68,000 frontline positions it now has, hiring pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, gate agents and other staff needed to handle the increase in passengers it expects.
The airline cut about 22,000 employees last year during the downturn, although it has already recalled some of those employees to cope with a surge in leisure travel.
It is by far the largest order for the 737 Max since it was grounded for 20 months starting in March 2019 following two fatal crashes that killed 346 people.

Southwest (LUV), which owns more Max jets than any other airline, has ordered an additional 134 737 Max jets since the Federal Aviation Administration approved the plane to fly again. But even with Tuesday's United orders, Boeing has not recouped the more than 1,000 canceled orders of its best-selling jet since the March 2019 grounding.
As much as this is an important vote of confidence for Boeing and the 737 Max, the demand for planes is still relatively low, depressing prices that aircraft makers can charge. Boeing has slowed production of its planes, closed one factory in Washington state that had built the 787 Dreamliner widebody jet, and cut staff.
United had already placed orders for 50 additional 737 Max jets since the grounding was lifted last November — 25 of which were among those built during the grounding but never delivered because the original orders were canceled.
United also said it will revamp the interiors of all of its existing full-sized jets, adding seat-back entertainment systems, larger luggage bins and more "economy plus" seats that come with additional legroom — and higher fares.

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...and on and on

#682 Post by Boac »

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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#683 Post by Boac »

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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#684 Post by PHXPhlyer »

Boeing admits a new manufacturing flaw on the 787 and tallies more 737 MAX cancellations
Sep. 8, 2020 at 9:14 am Updated Sep. 8, 2020 at 9:00 pm

Check the date of the article. :-o #-o
Old news.

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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#685 Post by Boac »

Yes, missed that. I didn't however know about a lot of the issues. It looks now as if there are issues at the front of the beast as per the Reuters.
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#686 Post by Pontius Navigator »

"Boeing declined to comment", see 682 above.

That will really reassure the punters.
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#687 Post by TheGreenGoblin »

A bit more up to date information on the FAA/Boeing position of the certification of the 777X


Why 777X certification push-back may be sign of change at FAA
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#688 Post by Boac »

Testifying to Congress, Michael Teal, former chief engineer of the 737 Max programme, said he didn’t know Boeing only used one AoA sensor
Hmm. One assumes (hopes) he pre-dates MCAS.
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#689 Post by Undried Plum »

Yet more bad news for Boeing
WASHINGTON, July 15 (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Thursday issued a directive to operators of all Boeing Co (BA.N) 737 series airplanes to conduct inspections to address possible failures of cabin altitude pressure switches.

The directive requires operators to conduct repetitive tests of the switches and replace them if needed. The directive covers 2,502 U.S.-registered airplanes and 9,315 airplanes worldwide.

It was prompted after an operator reported in September that both pressure switches failed the on-wing functional test on three different 737 models.

The FAA said failure of the switches could result in the cabin altitude warning system not activating if the cabin altitude exceeds 10,000 feet (3,050 m), at which point oxygen levels could become dangerously low.

Airplane cabins are pressurized to the equivalent of not more than 8,000 feet (2438 m).

Boeing said it supports "the FAA’s direction, which makes mandatory the inspection interval that we issued to the fleet in June."The FAA directive did not report any in-flight failures of the switches.

The FAA said on Thursday that tests must be conducted within 2,000 flight hours since the last test of the cabin altitude pressure switches, before airplanes have flown 2,000 hours, or within 90 days of the directive's effective date.

Boeing initially reviewed the issue, including the expected failure rate of the switches, and found it did not pose a safety issue.

Subsequent investigation and analysis led the FAA and Boeing to determine in May that "the failure rate of both switches is much higher than initially estimated, and therefore does pose a safety issue." Boeing declined to say what the failure rate was.

The FAA added it "does not yet have sufficient information to determine what has caused this unexpectedly high failure rate."

Due to the importance of functions provided by the switch, the FAA in 2012 mandated all Boeing 737 airplanes utilize two switches to provide redundancy in case of one switch’s failure.

The directive covers all versions of the 737 jetliners, including the MAX, but is unrelated to any issues related to the MAX's return to service last November.
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#690 Post by PHXPhlyer »

Boeing delays Starliner spacecraft launch again over technical issues

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/04/tech/boe ... index.html

New York (CNN Business)The long-awaited test flight of Boeing's Starliner, which is designed to carry astronauts and compete with SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, is once again delayed. It's just one more setback in a series of them for a trial that NASA and Boeing desperately want to go off without any major issues like the ones they had during their first launch attempt, back in December 2019.

A Starliner capsule had been slated to take off earlier this week on an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station, a follow-up to the company's botched first attempt. This mission will be a decisive moment for Boeing and NASA, as the traditional aerospace giant seeks to join the relative upstart SpaceX in ferrying people to the station.
But after a lightning storm rolled through the launch site in Florida where the spacecraft was sitting atop its rocket on Monday, Boeing ran some checks to ensure the vehicle wasn't affected. That's when they discovered an issue with the Starliner's propulsion system: A valve was out of place, and it wasn't clear why.
So far, officials have only been able to rule out software issues, according to a statement from Boeing. That indicates the current issue is unrelated to the hangups that plagued Boeing's first oribtal Starliner launch attempt in 2019, when software issues caused the capsule to misfire and stumble off course and forced it to make an early return to Earth.
As of late Tuesday evening, Boeing and NASA teams were still troubleshooting the issue, taking potential takeoff times on Wednesday off the table. The spacecraft is now expected to be powered down and rolled back into the indoor Vertical Integration Facility, where the capsule is attached to the top of its rocket ahead of flight, "for further inspection and testing to inform the next steps," according to Boeing.
It was not clear as of Wednesday morning when the issue will be resolved or when Boeing will once again attempt to the launch. A NASA spokesman said a new target date will be determined after the additional checks are carried out.
"The thing with spaceflight is there are thousands or millions of moving parts," Dan Huot, a NASA public affairs officer, told CNN Business. "You run through everything you can possibly think of" to rule out issues.
The ongoing delays come after the International Space Station, where the spacecraft is slated to dock for a few days, was knocked off kilter by a misfiring Russian module, quashing Boeing's hopes to get Starliner off the ground last week. The ISS has since stabilized and is no longer holding up the Starliner flight in any way, Huot said.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeings CST-100 Starliner spacecraft onboard is seen on the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 ahead of the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission, Thursday, July 29, 2021 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with Boeings CST-100 Starliner spacecraft onboard is seen on the launch pad at Space Launch Complex 41 ahead of the Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission, Thursday, July 29, 2021 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
This mission's success is crucial for Boeing, which has been working since the early 2010s to develop a spacecraft capable of taking astronauts to and from the ISS but has encountered numerous delays and technical hangups.
Boeing revealed that ground controllers lost contact with Starliner dozens of times during its first orbital test mission, and the company later admitted that it had failed to run a full simulation of how the spacecraft's software would run during the two major stretches of the mission — from liftoff to docking with the International Space Station and from undocking to landing. Such testing could have potentially detected Starliner's software problems before liftoff. #-o
Launch delays are common across the spaceflight industry. But if issues arise after Starliner gets off the ground, it would be yet another embarrassing black eye for Boeing and possibly throw into question how heavily the US government, which holds many billions of dollars worth of contracts with the company, should be relying on the company.
Boeing's Starliner spacecraft is expected to be Boeing's answer to SpaceX's Crew Dragon, which has already begun flying astronauts and ushered in the return of human spaceflight to US soil after a decade-long haitus. Both Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Crew Dragon were developed under contract with NASA, though they'll be owned and operated by their respective companies, and are designed to take astronauts and possibly tourists to and from the ISS.

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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#691 Post by Boac »

Gone back into the garage to be fixed.
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#692 Post by PHXPhlyer »

Boeing's troubled Starliner spacecraft must return to factory, causing more delays

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/13/business ... index.html

(CNN)Boeing revealed Friday that apparent issues with the propulsion system on its Starliner spacecraft — which is designed to carry astronauts and potentially tourists to the International Space Station — are worse than initially anticipated, putting yet another lengthy delay on the horizon.

Boeing delays Starliner spacecraft launch again over technical issues

The Starliner is a gumdrop-shaped capsule meant to house astronauts and ferry them through space after launching atop a rocket. The vehicle is years behind its planned entry to service, and myriad issues and delays during the development process have been a black eye for Boeing. Meanwhile, its rival, SpaceX, has already completed development and testing of its own crewed spacecraft.
Boeing was slated to repeat an uncrewed test flight of Starliner earlier this month after several major software issues plagued its first attempt in December 2019, leaving the spacecraft unable to dock with the ISS and forced to make an early return to Earth.
After more than a year of working to solve those issues, a new slate of problems was discovered when the spacecraft was rolled out to its launch pad earlier this month and began going through pre-flight ground checks. The issues involved 13 valves in the spacecraft's propulsion system, which were not opening on command as they must before liftoff, according to the company. After attempting to fix the issue on site at NASA's launch facilities in Florida, nine of the 13 valves began working again.
But Boeing disclosed Friday that it still hasn't identified the root cause of the issue, though the company said it was likely related to moisture — possibly from the humid Florida air — leaking into the propulsion valves. The company also disclosed additional problems with abnormal temperature readings. The company will need to return the Starliner spacecraft to a Boeing factory, signaling a potentially expensive months-long delay before it can proceed with the crucial test.
"We've exhausted every possible option," John Vollmer, the manager of Boeing's Starliner program, told reporters Friday. He acknowledged that Starliner will not launch this test flight in August. It may not even happen in 2021, though, Vollmer said, it's "too much to speculate" at this point.
The orbital flight test, as the uncrewed mission is called, is the final step in a years-long testing process that Boeing needs to complete before it can launch its first mission with astronauts on board.
This mission's success is critical for Boeing, which has been working since the early 2010s to develop a spacecraft capable of taking astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Until SpaceX's Demo-2 flight in May of 2020, NASA had been forced to rely on Russia for human spaceflights after the retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle program.
Boeing and SpaceX each received contracts to provide transportation to the ISS for NASA astronauts, a unique arrangement in which the private companies, rather than NASA, handle development and testing, and NASA essentially buys their services.
SpaceX's development program was also several years behind schedule, but the company has leapt ahead of Boeing. After completing its first crewed flight last year, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule has now entered full commercial service. There are even plans to send four tourists on an orbital joyride aboard the vehicle later this year.
Starliner's issues, on the other hand, have been so pervasive that it even set off speculation that NASA may cut ties with the company for this program, though the space agency has staunchly denied those rumors and continued to do so despite revelations of even more issues.
"It's a disappointing day," said Kathy Lueders, NASA's head of human spaceflight, during a press call Friday afternoon. "We are committed to continue working with Boeing on bringing on their crew transportation...and we will go fly when we're ready."

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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#693 Post by TheGreenGoblin »

Flight International Tale of the Tape -
It was another awful year for Boeing’s commercial sales fortunes, with an almost 50% drop in revenues to just $16.2 billion. This followed a 44% decline the previous year, largely due to the 737 Max grounding. To put it in context, Boeing made just twice as much revenue from its range of single- and twin-aisle airliners as Gulfstream did in 2020 with a family of specialist business jets.

At just over $39 billion, Airbus’s commercial aircraft sales were two-and-a-half times that of its US rival, but still more than 37% lower than in 2019, as a result of depressed deliveries during the first nine months of the Covid-19 crisis.

SALES SUFFERING
The other commercial airliner makers also suffered, albeit from a smaller base, with Embraer’s revenues from its E-Jet and E2 ranges dropping by a half. Sales at turboprop manufacturer ATR fell even more sharply, by over 72%. Bombardier’s $314 million revenues were the residue of a regional jet business that was divested to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in June 2020, its Dash 8 turboprop programme already having been sold to Longview Aviation a year earlier.

The business aircraft manufacturers fared better. Gulfstream’s revenues were down 17.6% to just over $8 billion, but it was the best-performing brand in the sector in terms of sales by far. Closest rival Bombardier recorded revenues of almost $5.6 billion from its Global, Challenger and (now discontinued) Learjet families.

Textron’s general aviation activities generated just under $4 billion, about $1.5 billion more than Dassault’s Falcon Jet operation, although the French manufacturer closed the gap in 2020.

Embraer’s corporate aviation types continue to be the top-sellers in their categories, but its light and medium-size business jets sell for less than the longer-range offerings of Bombardier, Dassault and Gulfstream, and often at tighter margins. The Brazilian manufacturer’s revenues from this division were down 23%.
https://www.flightglobal.com/flight-int ... 50.article
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#694 Post by Woody »

Weren’t Jet2 an all Boeing outfit?

https://ukaviation.news/jet2-becomes-la ... r-36-jets/
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#695 Post by Wodrick »

Yes 75s and 73s
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#696 Post by Woody »

232 seats on an A321NEO :-o
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#697 Post by ian16th »

Woody wrote:
Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:25 pm
232 seats on an A321NEO :-o
That's just for pax!

There are a couple up front for the driver and his mate! Then others for the trolley dollies.
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#698 Post by PHXPhlyer »

Not so bad in single class configuration as we had ~191 pax with 16 in first and some premium economy (more leg room) and cattle class.

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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#699 Post by Ibbie »

Weren’t Jet2 an all Boeing outfit?
They were but presently operate one A321 from Manchester (Ex TC) and have two others stored. Before the pandemic they were planning to use A321s from Titan this summer. So the decision is not so big a shock.
232 seats on an A321NEO
easyJet's have 235 seats.
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Re: More Boeing Bad News

#700 Post by llondel »

Interesting to listen to if anyone's got a spare hour. Probably doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, it's more for the uninformed masses.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film ... atal-flaw/
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