More Boeing Bad News
Re: More Boeing Bad News
I tell 'ee - when I were 'doing it' I was always so pleased I was flying a Boeing. Now, looking back, I actually realise how lucky I was......................
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Re: More Boeing Bad News
KLM flight from Manchester declared “Mayday Mayday Mayday” on approach to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport.
On March 15th, 2024, KLM flight KL1074 departed Manchester, UK by 11:05 GMT to Amsterdam.
The flight was performed by a Boeing 737-900 (registration PH-BXS) which is 22 years old.
The aircraft descended from cruising altitude of 31,000 ft when the pilots noticed a flap issue.
The crew declared an emergency (Mayday Mayday Mayday) and informed traffic control about a flap overspeed on short final.
The flaps were stuck at 25° and the fuel was running low making the situation more stressful.
Pilots informed ATC about just 30 minutes of fuel remaining and were worrying about runway 22 may be too short.
The flight was cleared to land on runway 27 where it landed safely on second attempt after performing a go around
On March 15th, 2024, KLM flight KL1074 departed Manchester, UK by 11:05 GMT to Amsterdam.
The flight was performed by a Boeing 737-900 (registration PH-BXS) which is 22 years old.
The aircraft descended from cruising altitude of 31,000 ft when the pilots noticed a flap issue.
The crew declared an emergency (Mayday Mayday Mayday) and informed traffic control about a flap overspeed on short final.
The flaps were stuck at 25° and the fuel was running low making the situation more stressful.
Pilots informed ATC about just 30 minutes of fuel remaining and were worrying about runway 22 may be too short.
The flight was cleared to land on runway 27 where it landed safely on second attempt after performing a go around
Re: Boeing + United = ?
United CEO tries to reassure customers following multiple safety incidents
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/business ... index.html
United Airlines is trying to reassure passengers after a series of incidents on its Boeing jets this year, sending out a statement to customers that safety is “at the center of everything that we do.”
“While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus,” United CEO Scott Kirby said in a Monday morning message to customers.
On Friday in a United Boeing 737-800 landed in Medford, Oregon, with a panel from the underside of the fuselage missing.
Earlier this month, United suffered a series of four incidents, all involving Boeing jets . A United Boeing 737-900ER spewed flames from an engine after takeoff from Houston, a United Boeing 777 lost a wheel during takeoff from San Francisco, a United Boeing 737 Max slid off a runway in Houston, and a United Boeing 777 trailed hydraulic fluid leaving Sydney.
“Our team is reviewing the details of each case to understand what happened and using those insights to inform our safety training and procedures across all employee groups,” Kirby said.
United is adding an extra day to pilot training, retooling training for new mechanics, and “dedicating more resources to supplier network management.”
Passengers seeing a series of bad headlines about the airline and its Boeing jets may consider booking away from the airline, in its letter, is trying to prevent customers from leaving. As of the end of last year, 81% of the jets that United uses on its mainline operations came from Boeing, compared to just over half the jets in the mainline fleets of rivals Delta and American airlines.
Boeing problems also getting attention
Beyond the problems on United flights, the most dramatic Boeing incident this year involved an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that lost a door plug in a January 5 flight, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane. And last week a Latam Airlines flight from Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand plunged suddenly, causing some passengers to be thrown to the ceiling of the cabin.
Investigators are still looking at the causes of both those incidents, but a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board found Boeing left the bolts off the 10-week-old Alaska Air jet needed to keep the door plug in place. And Boeing suggested the Latam incident may have been caused by an incident in the cockpit and not anything to do with the plane’s controls.
The age of the aircraft in the United incidents suggest that the cause could lie with United personnel, rather than Boeing’s well documented quality issues. The plane that lost the panel on Friday’s flight was purchased by Boeing in 1998, for example. So Boeing’s quality issues almost certainly have nothing to do with that incident.
Still, United’s operations have been disrupted by Boeing’s problems. It has frozen hiring for a new class of pilots, because it won’t be getting as many new planes from Boeing this year as originally promised after production was slowed by the FAA. And its fleet of 737 Max 9 jets were grounded for three weeks in January following the incident at Alaska Air.
In addition, certification of a new model of Boeing jet that United has ordered, the 737 Max 10, has also been put on hold but the quality and safety problems at the company.
Kirby told investors last week that United is looking at possibly buying more jets from Boeing competitor Airbus, and he said earlier this year that the Alaska Air incident was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” on its plans to get deliveries of the Max 10 any time in the foreseeable future.
PP
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/business ... index.html
United Airlines is trying to reassure passengers after a series of incidents on its Boeing jets this year, sending out a statement to customers that safety is “at the center of everything that we do.”
“While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have our attention and have sharpened our focus,” United CEO Scott Kirby said in a Monday morning message to customers.
On Friday in a United Boeing 737-800 landed in Medford, Oregon, with a panel from the underside of the fuselage missing.
Earlier this month, United suffered a series of four incidents, all involving Boeing jets . A United Boeing 737-900ER spewed flames from an engine after takeoff from Houston, a United Boeing 777 lost a wheel during takeoff from San Francisco, a United Boeing 737 Max slid off a runway in Houston, and a United Boeing 777 trailed hydraulic fluid leaving Sydney.
“Our team is reviewing the details of each case to understand what happened and using those insights to inform our safety training and procedures across all employee groups,” Kirby said.
United is adding an extra day to pilot training, retooling training for new mechanics, and “dedicating more resources to supplier network management.”
Passengers seeing a series of bad headlines about the airline and its Boeing jets may consider booking away from the airline, in its letter, is trying to prevent customers from leaving. As of the end of last year, 81% of the jets that United uses on its mainline operations came from Boeing, compared to just over half the jets in the mainline fleets of rivals Delta and American airlines.
Boeing problems also getting attention
Beyond the problems on United flights, the most dramatic Boeing incident this year involved an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that lost a door plug in a January 5 flight, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane. And last week a Latam Airlines flight from Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand plunged suddenly, causing some passengers to be thrown to the ceiling of the cabin.
Investigators are still looking at the causes of both those incidents, but a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board found Boeing left the bolts off the 10-week-old Alaska Air jet needed to keep the door plug in place. And Boeing suggested the Latam incident may have been caused by an incident in the cockpit and not anything to do with the plane’s controls.
The age of the aircraft in the United incidents suggest that the cause could lie with United personnel, rather than Boeing’s well documented quality issues. The plane that lost the panel on Friday’s flight was purchased by Boeing in 1998, for example. So Boeing’s quality issues almost certainly have nothing to do with that incident.
Still, United’s operations have been disrupted by Boeing’s problems. It has frozen hiring for a new class of pilots, because it won’t be getting as many new planes from Boeing this year as originally promised after production was slowed by the FAA. And its fleet of 737 Max 9 jets were grounded for three weeks in January following the incident at Alaska Air.
In addition, certification of a new model of Boeing jet that United has ordered, the 737 Max 10, has also been put on hold but the quality and safety problems at the company.
Kirby told investors last week that United is looking at possibly buying more jets from Boeing competitor Airbus, and he said earlier this year that the Alaska Air incident was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” on its plans to get deliveries of the Max 10 any time in the foreseeable future.
PP
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Fox3WheresMyBanana
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Re: More Boeing Bad News
So, they are "all unrelated", but extra days of training are the remedy for all of them?
See, accountants and PR people CAN run aviation companies
...into the ground.
See, accountants and PR people CAN run aviation companies
...into the ground.
Re: More Boeing Bad News
FAA wants inspections of Boeing Max planes for wiring flaw that could lead to 'loss of control'
Boeing says it’s “not an immediate safety-of-flight issue,” but some aviation experts disagree.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bo ... rcna143861
In December 2021, the flight crew of a 737 Max 8 jet descending on autopilot from the skies somewhere over the United States momentarily lost control when it “rolled violently to the right” without warning, the plane’s captain recounted.
The first officer acted fast, disengaging the autopilot, and recovered control of the airplane — all within about a second. The plane landed safely with no other problems.
The unidentified plane’s sudden uncommanded bank, at an angle of about 30 degrees, was enough to prompt the captain to submit a report to the Aviation Safety Reporting System, a NASA-run repository shared confidentially among front-line aviation personnel worldwide and available publicly with identifying details removed.
In the report, the pilot wrote that a control panel warning lit up during the incident, signaling a problem with the airplane’s left-wing spoiler — a hinged plate on top of the wing that can be lifted to cause drag and slow the aircraft. It wasn’t the first time the problem had happened, the captain added.
“This exact scenario was previously written up in the logbook multiple times in the preceding days,” the captain noted.
The 2021 incident bears striking similarities to ones that prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to propose a rule last week to require that operators inspect the wings of about 207 737 Max airplanes in the U.S. for wiring damage within three years. It’s another in a string of manufacturing and quality control troubles to emerge publicly that have haunted the 737 Max line, thrusting Boeing into crisis.
Details from the report that described the spoiler problem 27 months ago haven’t previously been reported. Neither have details in two “service difficulty reports” about incidents in two planes that were submitted to the FAA in December 2021 and November 2022.
All three reports, which aviation experts reviewed for NBC News, appear to closely correspond with what the FAA publicly identified in its proposal last week as an “unsafe condition” that could result in a “loss of control” of certain Boeing 737 Max jets because of “nonconforming” installation of spoiler control wires. Two of the three reports noted an uncommanded rightward roll, coupled with the spoiler warning light. The third didn’t involve a roll, but it described issues similar to what the FAA says is “the root” of the problem described in its proposal: chafing of the wires controlling the spoiler.
The FAA proposed rule, known as an airworthiness directive, cites a single report about one airplane that experienced “multiple unusual deployments” of spoilers during several flights, adding that an investigation found spoiler wire bundles became chafed because of contact with the aircraft’s internal wing structure. It said the condition is “likely to exist or develop on other products of the same type design.”
The FAA’s move comes eight months after Boeing sent a service bulletin in July to operators of about 860 potentially affected 737 Max-8 and -9s worldwide, providing them with instructions to perform voluntary inspections of wire bundles in their fleets.
Boeing first notified operators about the potential spoiler issue in May 2022, and it “developed a solution” in the Max production line in June 2022 that addressed the problem on new planes, spokesperson Jessica Kowal told NBC News.
The steps Boeing has taken and the FAA’s rulemaking process demonstrate that “this is not an immediate safety-of-flight issue,” Kowal said.
But four aviation experts — a former Boeing 737 factory manager, two retired FAA safety engineers and an ex-airline captain who flew 737s — said in interviews that they believe the problem is serious and requires more urgent attention.
“I think it’s extremely significant, and I think Boeing and the FAA are not putting sufficient priority on it,” said Joe Jacobsen, a retired FAA engineer who has served as a technical expert to Congress and as an FAA technical representative on National Transportation Safety Board accident investigations. “It should be inspected as soon as possible.”
The FAA declined to answer questions about its proposal for this article, saying in a statement only that it bases its “compliance times on the risk from the issue that’s being addressed.” The agency said it will “consider all relevant public comments” through late April before it finalizes the proposal.
Captain John Cox, a former commercial airline pilot and founder of an aviation safety consultancy, said the problem demonstrates “yet another case where an airplane got out of the factory with a defect or an improperly executed task and it wasn’t picked up.”
“That, in light of the other issues that we’ve seen recently from Boeing, is the most concerning to me,” he said.
While it still faces legal and reputational fallout from two Max crashes that killed 346 people five years ago, Boeing came under new scrutiny this year after a panel blew out of a 737 Max 9 and left a gaping hole mid-cabin during a crowded Alaska Airlines flight in January.
The incident prompted the FAA to temporarily ground some models of the plane and issue an emergency airworthiness directive requiring immediate inspections.
By contrast, Kowal said, the spoiler issue “has been identified as a safety issue longer-term," giving operators up to three years to inspect the planes.
Kowal declined to answer questions about exactly when Boeing first learned of the issue or provide details about the aircraft that prompted internal analysis of the problem.
Boeing isn’t sure how many operators have already voluntarily performed inspections, Kowal said. At least one, SunExpress Airlines, has submitted a comment to the FAA seeking credit for having already performed the voluntary inspections once the proposal becomes mandated.
“This issue isn’t new or an emergency,” Kowal said.
But until the FAA published its proposal along with Boeing’s July service bulletin last week, the public knew nothing about the matter, said Ed Pierson, a former manager of Boeing’s 737 factory who now heads the nonprofit advocacy group Foundation for Aviation Safety.
“The FAA is just now reporting it,” Pierson said. “Not even reporting it — we’re learning about it through a federal rule-making process … under the guise of informing the public.”
“You would think people would want to know,” he added.
Cox, the former commercial airline pilot, said he believes most trained commercial airline pilots confronted with such a rogue spoiler deployment in flight could overcome the problem.
“I can see places where it would be fairly serious, you know, like in the process of landing,” he said. “But 737s have so much roll control. It’s one of the real strengths of that jet.”
An uncommanded spoiler deployment “could make for a hard landing or something like that if it happened at the exact wrong time,” he added. “But that window is really short. It could be a handful, but I think that it would be controllable.”
Cox said he believes the FAA proposal calling for inspections of hundreds of Maxes is the appropriate way to address the problem. But he added it’s surprising how long it took Boeing, and then the FAA, to address the issue after they learned about it.
“Any time you have an uncommanded flight control movement, it’s serious,” Cox said. “So for something like this, I would like to think they’d move faster than that.”
Asked about the time it took Boeing to respond, Kowal said that in general, when an issue is reported in the fleet, an engineering analysis is conducted to identify a root cause and determine safety implications and production issues. All of that takes time, she said. The FAA then has its own regulatory pace and process, she said.
Specific to the spoiler issue, Kowal said: “The chafing happens at a very slow rate; this was identified in the fleet on one airplane.”
But one of the reports NBC News reviewed suggests that wire chafing occurred on a relatively new plane, and states that it might have happened during production.
Kowal didn’t address the specific reports identified by NBC News for this story, saying only that “any issue that Boeing becomes aware of is assessed from a safety perspective with the FAA.”
Mike Dostert, a retired FAA engineer who has studied wiring problems that caused airplane accidents, said wire wear rates are unpredictable because of a host of variables that can occur during installation.
“In my experience, it’s not an exact science,” said Dostert, who wrote multiple airworthiness directives during his career.
“They need to get these things fixed quickly,” he added. “We shouldn’t be taking long times, especially years, to address potentially catastrophic, unsafe conditions. Why take the chance?”
PP
Boeing says it’s “not an immediate safety-of-flight issue,” but some aviation experts disagree.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bo ... rcna143861
In December 2021, the flight crew of a 737 Max 8 jet descending on autopilot from the skies somewhere over the United States momentarily lost control when it “rolled violently to the right” without warning, the plane’s captain recounted.
The first officer acted fast, disengaging the autopilot, and recovered control of the airplane — all within about a second. The plane landed safely with no other problems.
The unidentified plane’s sudden uncommanded bank, at an angle of about 30 degrees, was enough to prompt the captain to submit a report to the Aviation Safety Reporting System, a NASA-run repository shared confidentially among front-line aviation personnel worldwide and available publicly with identifying details removed.
In the report, the pilot wrote that a control panel warning lit up during the incident, signaling a problem with the airplane’s left-wing spoiler — a hinged plate on top of the wing that can be lifted to cause drag and slow the aircraft. It wasn’t the first time the problem had happened, the captain added.
“This exact scenario was previously written up in the logbook multiple times in the preceding days,” the captain noted.
The 2021 incident bears striking similarities to ones that prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to propose a rule last week to require that operators inspect the wings of about 207 737 Max airplanes in the U.S. for wiring damage within three years. It’s another in a string of manufacturing and quality control troubles to emerge publicly that have haunted the 737 Max line, thrusting Boeing into crisis.
Details from the report that described the spoiler problem 27 months ago haven’t previously been reported. Neither have details in two “service difficulty reports” about incidents in two planes that were submitted to the FAA in December 2021 and November 2022.
All three reports, which aviation experts reviewed for NBC News, appear to closely correspond with what the FAA publicly identified in its proposal last week as an “unsafe condition” that could result in a “loss of control” of certain Boeing 737 Max jets because of “nonconforming” installation of spoiler control wires. Two of the three reports noted an uncommanded rightward roll, coupled with the spoiler warning light. The third didn’t involve a roll, but it described issues similar to what the FAA says is “the root” of the problem described in its proposal: chafing of the wires controlling the spoiler.
The FAA proposed rule, known as an airworthiness directive, cites a single report about one airplane that experienced “multiple unusual deployments” of spoilers during several flights, adding that an investigation found spoiler wire bundles became chafed because of contact with the aircraft’s internal wing structure. It said the condition is “likely to exist or develop on other products of the same type design.”
The FAA’s move comes eight months after Boeing sent a service bulletin in July to operators of about 860 potentially affected 737 Max-8 and -9s worldwide, providing them with instructions to perform voluntary inspections of wire bundles in their fleets.
Boeing first notified operators about the potential spoiler issue in May 2022, and it “developed a solution” in the Max production line in June 2022 that addressed the problem on new planes, spokesperson Jessica Kowal told NBC News.
The steps Boeing has taken and the FAA’s rulemaking process demonstrate that “this is not an immediate safety-of-flight issue,” Kowal said.
But four aviation experts — a former Boeing 737 factory manager, two retired FAA safety engineers and an ex-airline captain who flew 737s — said in interviews that they believe the problem is serious and requires more urgent attention.
“I think it’s extremely significant, and I think Boeing and the FAA are not putting sufficient priority on it,” said Joe Jacobsen, a retired FAA engineer who has served as a technical expert to Congress and as an FAA technical representative on National Transportation Safety Board accident investigations. “It should be inspected as soon as possible.”
The FAA declined to answer questions about its proposal for this article, saying in a statement only that it bases its “compliance times on the risk from the issue that’s being addressed.” The agency said it will “consider all relevant public comments” through late April before it finalizes the proposal.
Captain John Cox, a former commercial airline pilot and founder of an aviation safety consultancy, said the problem demonstrates “yet another case where an airplane got out of the factory with a defect or an improperly executed task and it wasn’t picked up.”
“That, in light of the other issues that we’ve seen recently from Boeing, is the most concerning to me,” he said.
While it still faces legal and reputational fallout from two Max crashes that killed 346 people five years ago, Boeing came under new scrutiny this year after a panel blew out of a 737 Max 9 and left a gaping hole mid-cabin during a crowded Alaska Airlines flight in January.
The incident prompted the FAA to temporarily ground some models of the plane and issue an emergency airworthiness directive requiring immediate inspections.
By contrast, Kowal said, the spoiler issue “has been identified as a safety issue longer-term," giving operators up to three years to inspect the planes.
Kowal declined to answer questions about exactly when Boeing first learned of the issue or provide details about the aircraft that prompted internal analysis of the problem.
Boeing isn’t sure how many operators have already voluntarily performed inspections, Kowal said. At least one, SunExpress Airlines, has submitted a comment to the FAA seeking credit for having already performed the voluntary inspections once the proposal becomes mandated.
“This issue isn’t new or an emergency,” Kowal said.
But until the FAA published its proposal along with Boeing’s July service bulletin last week, the public knew nothing about the matter, said Ed Pierson, a former manager of Boeing’s 737 factory who now heads the nonprofit advocacy group Foundation for Aviation Safety.
“The FAA is just now reporting it,” Pierson said. “Not even reporting it — we’re learning about it through a federal rule-making process … under the guise of informing the public.”
“You would think people would want to know,” he added.
Cox, the former commercial airline pilot, said he believes most trained commercial airline pilots confronted with such a rogue spoiler deployment in flight could overcome the problem.
“I can see places where it would be fairly serious, you know, like in the process of landing,” he said. “But 737s have so much roll control. It’s one of the real strengths of that jet.”
An uncommanded spoiler deployment “could make for a hard landing or something like that if it happened at the exact wrong time,” he added. “But that window is really short. It could be a handful, but I think that it would be controllable.”
Cox said he believes the FAA proposal calling for inspections of hundreds of Maxes is the appropriate way to address the problem. But he added it’s surprising how long it took Boeing, and then the FAA, to address the issue after they learned about it.
“Any time you have an uncommanded flight control movement, it’s serious,” Cox said. “So for something like this, I would like to think they’d move faster than that.”
Asked about the time it took Boeing to respond, Kowal said that in general, when an issue is reported in the fleet, an engineering analysis is conducted to identify a root cause and determine safety implications and production issues. All of that takes time, she said. The FAA then has its own regulatory pace and process, she said.
Specific to the spoiler issue, Kowal said: “The chafing happens at a very slow rate; this was identified in the fleet on one airplane.”
But one of the reports NBC News reviewed suggests that wire chafing occurred on a relatively new plane, and states that it might have happened during production.
Kowal didn’t address the specific reports identified by NBC News for this story, saying only that “any issue that Boeing becomes aware of is assessed from a safety perspective with the FAA.”
Mike Dostert, a retired FAA engineer who has studied wiring problems that caused airplane accidents, said wire wear rates are unpredictable because of a host of variables that can occur during installation.
“In my experience, it’s not an exact science,” said Dostert, who wrote multiple airworthiness directives during his career.
“They need to get these things fixed quickly,” he added. “We shouldn’t be taking long times, especially years, to address potentially catastrophic, unsafe conditions. Why take the chance?”
PP
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Fox3WheresMyBanana
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Re: More Boeing Bad News
Now this is a real problem for Boeing.Mike Dostert, a retired FAA engineer who has studied wiring problems that caused airplane accidents, said wire wear rates are unpredictable because of a host of variables that can occur during installation.
“In my experience, it’s not an exact science,” said Dostert, who wrote multiple airworthiness directives during his career.
“They need to get these things fixed quickly,” he added. “We shouldn’t be taking long times, especially years, to address potentially catastrophic, unsafe conditions. Why take the chance?”
Nothing in aviation is "an exact science"
An awful lot of things in it are "potentially catastrophic, unsafe conditions".
And "safe" is a highly charged, largely subjective word.
Why take the chance? Well, because fixing things, and quickly, costs money, time and weight.
And if you push it too far, then all the airlines go bust, and military aviation goes home instead of hitting the targets.
I'm sure you could find someone to criticise every single aspect of aviation using exactly these words.
Boeing's problem is that all those someones will be dragged out by the media, politicians, etc to say those words, about Boeing,
and Boeing will be the only ones going bust.
My personal view remains that Boeing needs to sack its entire senior management, some of them should be in jail, all the cheapo hires need firing, and they need proper engineers back in charge and all the way down the line.
But I do not think it needs to go bankrupt if they do that. Fix the problem.
Re: More Boeing Bad News
How the crisis at Boeing could make your next vacation more expensive
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/business ... index.html
Boeing’s production problems are reverberating through an airline industry starved for planes, making it harder for carriers to meet red-hot demand for travel and raising the prospect of even higher ticket prices.
On Wednesday, Ryanair (RYAAY) CEO Michael O’Leary explained why prices have further to climb. “If you have constrained supply (and) strong demand, I think it’s inevitable that you’re going to see air fares bump again this summer… between 5 and 10%,” he told CNN’s Richard Quest.
Europe’s biggest airline by passengers had expected to receive 57 Boeing planes this summer, but now anticipates getting between 35 and 40, according to O’Leary.
Ryanair is far from the only major carrier with too few aircraft. Southwest in the United States, which flies only Boeing 737 planes, announced last week that Boeing would deliver 40% fewer jets than it had been expecting this year.
A critical shortage of planes is also plaguing other airlines — and the problem is not confined to Boeing.
According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, about 600 Airbus jets globally have been grounded for at least the last month due to an issue with engines made by US aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney.
I seem to have missed this "little" issue.
See next post.
That’s hurting Lufthansa, the German group that also owns carriers in Austria and Switzerland. CEO Carsten Spohr told CNN Wednesday that it has more than 30 Airbus A320Neos currently grounded.
“This industry … suffers from this lack of airplanes,” he added, noting that the shortage was affecting the company’s ability to grow.
The grounding of some planes and delayed deliveries of new aircraft will mean that fares in the United States “should stay elevated through 2024, instead of tapering… as occurred last year after May,” according to Robert Mann, founder of R.W. Mann & Company, an airline industry consulting firm in the United States.
Mann cited data from Airlines Reporting Corporation, which tracks ticket sales worldwide, showing that fares on US domestic flights booked in February for travel this year were 5%-6% higher than the same month last year, far outpacing overall inflation.
Airbus output still below 2019
The supply constraints helping to keep air fares higher may be around for some time yet. There’s a near-duopoly between Boeing and Airbus in commercial aircraft manufacturing, meaning airlines have almost no option but to wait in line.
According to ADS, the United Kingdom’s aerospace industry association, the global order backlog for commercial aircraft has now topped 15,700.
Last year, airlines globally placed 3,850 commercial aircraft orders, the highest number since ADS started publishing the data in 2010 and a 91% increase on 2022. By comparison, planemakers delivered 1,265 aircraft, just 11% up on the previous year.
Boeing said this week that it had slowed production of its 737 Max jets after a part of the fuselage of a Max 9 blew out mid-flight in early January, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane.
Aviation regulators have yet to certify Boeing’s Max 10 as safe for passengers — a plane crucial to the growth of carriers such as Ryanair, which inked a $40 billion deal last year to buy up to 300 of the aircraft.
United Airlines, for its part, is not waiting around for Max 10s. The US carrier has asked Boeing to stop building it Max 10s and build Max 9s instead, and is also looking at plugging the gaps with Airbus planes, provided it makes financial sense.
“If we get a deal that the economics work, we’ll do something (with Airbus),” CEO Scott Kirby said at a JPMorgan conference last week.
But — as Kirby well knows — it’s not that easy to switch planemakers. Aircraft orders are placed years in advance and pilots are trained to fly certain planes. Airbus, meanwhile, had an order backlog approaching 8,600 commercial aircraft at the end of last year and is already booked up until 2030.
The European planemaker is also a lot less productive than it used to be as pandemic supply chain kinks linger. “At Airbus, we are still producing far less planes than we were producing in 2019,” CEO Guillame Faury said at the “Europe 2024” conference in Berlin this week.
According to Johan Lundgren, the CEO of EasyJet, the low-cost UK carrier is “probably the only airline in Europe” getting all its aircraft orders from Airbus on time this year. The industry will likely be constrained for the next three years, he told CNN.
Soaring demand
Even before Boeing’s troubles turned the industry on its head, airlines were ill-prepared for the spectacular comeback in air travel that followed the pandemic. Many had slashed the size of their fleets and laid off thousands of employees just to stay afloat as Covid-19 lockdowns throttled air travel.
Airlines are now scrambling to respond to resurgent demand, as Boeing’s crisis collides with supply chain problems. A global boom in defense spending is complicating matters further, since about 40% of the supply chain serves both aerospace and defense companies, according to Craven at ADS.
The question now, says Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aviation consultant, is how quickly Airbus can ramp up and go from “half the market to two-thirds and beyond.”
“This is an industry with only two suppliers, very high barriers to entry and (an) extremely strong comeback with a very tight labor market,” he told CNN.
Some 4.7 billion people are expected to travel by plane this year, an historic high that exceeds the 4.5 billion recorded in 2019, according to the International Air Transport Association, an industry group.
“Capacity is going to be tight and that leads to higher ticket prices,” said Aboulafia, who is managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.
“What you’ll probably see is (that) the reduction in high fares we were hoping to see doesn’t happen. You’ll probably see a reversal… across the board and centered in the Atlantic.”
PP
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/business ... index.html
Boeing’s production problems are reverberating through an airline industry starved for planes, making it harder for carriers to meet red-hot demand for travel and raising the prospect of even higher ticket prices.
On Wednesday, Ryanair (RYAAY) CEO Michael O’Leary explained why prices have further to climb. “If you have constrained supply (and) strong demand, I think it’s inevitable that you’re going to see air fares bump again this summer… between 5 and 10%,” he told CNN’s Richard Quest.
Europe’s biggest airline by passengers had expected to receive 57 Boeing planes this summer, but now anticipates getting between 35 and 40, according to O’Leary.
Ryanair is far from the only major carrier with too few aircraft. Southwest in the United States, which flies only Boeing 737 planes, announced last week that Boeing would deliver 40% fewer jets than it had been expecting this year.
A critical shortage of planes is also plaguing other airlines — and the problem is not confined to Boeing.
According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, about 600 Airbus jets globally have been grounded for at least the last month due to an issue with engines made by US aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney.
I seem to have missed this "little" issue.
See next post.
That’s hurting Lufthansa, the German group that also owns carriers in Austria and Switzerland. CEO Carsten Spohr told CNN Wednesday that it has more than 30 Airbus A320Neos currently grounded.
“This industry … suffers from this lack of airplanes,” he added, noting that the shortage was affecting the company’s ability to grow.
The grounding of some planes and delayed deliveries of new aircraft will mean that fares in the United States “should stay elevated through 2024, instead of tapering… as occurred last year after May,” according to Robert Mann, founder of R.W. Mann & Company, an airline industry consulting firm in the United States.
Mann cited data from Airlines Reporting Corporation, which tracks ticket sales worldwide, showing that fares on US domestic flights booked in February for travel this year were 5%-6% higher than the same month last year, far outpacing overall inflation.
Airbus output still below 2019
The supply constraints helping to keep air fares higher may be around for some time yet. There’s a near-duopoly between Boeing and Airbus in commercial aircraft manufacturing, meaning airlines have almost no option but to wait in line.
According to ADS, the United Kingdom’s aerospace industry association, the global order backlog for commercial aircraft has now topped 15,700.
Last year, airlines globally placed 3,850 commercial aircraft orders, the highest number since ADS started publishing the data in 2010 and a 91% increase on 2022. By comparison, planemakers delivered 1,265 aircraft, just 11% up on the previous year.
Boeing said this week that it had slowed production of its 737 Max jets after a part of the fuselage of a Max 9 blew out mid-flight in early January, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the plane.
Aviation regulators have yet to certify Boeing’s Max 10 as safe for passengers — a plane crucial to the growth of carriers such as Ryanair, which inked a $40 billion deal last year to buy up to 300 of the aircraft.
United Airlines, for its part, is not waiting around for Max 10s. The US carrier has asked Boeing to stop building it Max 10s and build Max 9s instead, and is also looking at plugging the gaps with Airbus planes, provided it makes financial sense.
“If we get a deal that the economics work, we’ll do something (with Airbus),” CEO Scott Kirby said at a JPMorgan conference last week.
But — as Kirby well knows — it’s not that easy to switch planemakers. Aircraft orders are placed years in advance and pilots are trained to fly certain planes. Airbus, meanwhile, had an order backlog approaching 8,600 commercial aircraft at the end of last year and is already booked up until 2030.
The European planemaker is also a lot less productive than it used to be as pandemic supply chain kinks linger. “At Airbus, we are still producing far less planes than we were producing in 2019,” CEO Guillame Faury said at the “Europe 2024” conference in Berlin this week.
According to Johan Lundgren, the CEO of EasyJet, the low-cost UK carrier is “probably the only airline in Europe” getting all its aircraft orders from Airbus on time this year. The industry will likely be constrained for the next three years, he told CNN.
Soaring demand
Even before Boeing’s troubles turned the industry on its head, airlines were ill-prepared for the spectacular comeback in air travel that followed the pandemic. Many had slashed the size of their fleets and laid off thousands of employees just to stay afloat as Covid-19 lockdowns throttled air travel.
Airlines are now scrambling to respond to resurgent demand, as Boeing’s crisis collides with supply chain problems. A global boom in defense spending is complicating matters further, since about 40% of the supply chain serves both aerospace and defense companies, according to Craven at ADS.
The question now, says Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aviation consultant, is how quickly Airbus can ramp up and go from “half the market to two-thirds and beyond.”
“This is an industry with only two suppliers, very high barriers to entry and (an) extremely strong comeback with a very tight labor market,” he told CNN.
Some 4.7 billion people are expected to travel by plane this year, an historic high that exceeds the 4.5 billion recorded in 2019, according to the International Air Transport Association, an industry group.
“Capacity is going to be tight and that leads to higher ticket prices,” said Aboulafia, who is managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory.
“What you’ll probably see is (that) the reduction in high fares we were hoping to see doesn’t happen. You’ll probably see a reversal… across the board and centered in the Atlantic.”
PP
Re: More Boeing Bad News
Engines on some Airbus jets with Pratt & Whitney engines will need to be removed and inspected
https://apnews.com/article/rtx-raytheon ... f7b3cb9533
DALLAS (AP) — A large number of Airbus passenger jets will need to have their engines removed and inspected in the coming months after engine maker Pratt & Whitney discovered a problem that could cause parts to wear out more quickly, potentially adding to stress on airlines during the remainder of a hectic summer travel season.
Shares of Pratt & Whitney parent RTX Corp. fell 11% Tuesday afternoon after the company disclosed the issue.
RTX said that a “rare condition” in powder metal used to manufacture certain parts made between late 2015 and mid-2021 will require speeded-up fleet inspections. The engine involved is most often used to power the Airbus A320neo, a midsize jet popular for short and medium-distance flights.
The company said it expects that about 200 of Pratt PW1100 engines will need to be pulled off and inspected by mid-September, and another 1,000 engines will need inspections in the next nine to 12 months.
Many Airbus A320 family jets use engines from CFM, but nearly 800 A320 and A321s have the affected Pratt engines, according to aviation-data firm Cirium. Indian low-cost airline IndiGo has nearly 140, Air China has 43, Germany’s Lufthansa has 37, and Mexico’s Volaris has 35.
Alliance to help Maine defense contractors that are struggling to fill jobs
Among U.S. carriers, Spirit Airlines received 34 of the planes, Hawaiian Airlines has 18 and JetBlue Airways 16, according to Cirium.
On a call with analysts, RTX Chief Operating Officer Christopher Calio said that the problem does not affect current production, and Pratt will continue to produce new engines and spare parts, but the life of parts made between late 2015 and mid-2021 could be reduced.
Pratt had planned to schedule “enhanced inspections” during normal maintenance stops, but based on recent discoveries, it decided that the inspections — focused on high-pressure turbine disks — needed to be speeded up, Calio said. He said the company is developing plans to conduct the inspections as quickly as possible.
The disclosure was made as RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, reported second-quarter earnings of $1.3 billion, up 2% from a year earlier. After adjusting for one-time items, the profit came to $1.29 per share, beating the $1.18 consensus forecast of analysts.
Revenue rose 12% to $18.3 billion, topping analysts’ prediction of less than $17.7 billion, according to a FactSet survey. Pratt accounted for about one-third of sales.
PP
https://apnews.com/article/rtx-raytheon ... f7b3cb9533
DALLAS (AP) — A large number of Airbus passenger jets will need to have their engines removed and inspected in the coming months after engine maker Pratt & Whitney discovered a problem that could cause parts to wear out more quickly, potentially adding to stress on airlines during the remainder of a hectic summer travel season.
Shares of Pratt & Whitney parent RTX Corp. fell 11% Tuesday afternoon after the company disclosed the issue.
RTX said that a “rare condition” in powder metal used to manufacture certain parts made between late 2015 and mid-2021 will require speeded-up fleet inspections. The engine involved is most often used to power the Airbus A320neo, a midsize jet popular for short and medium-distance flights.
The company said it expects that about 200 of Pratt PW1100 engines will need to be pulled off and inspected by mid-September, and another 1,000 engines will need inspections in the next nine to 12 months.
Many Airbus A320 family jets use engines from CFM, but nearly 800 A320 and A321s have the affected Pratt engines, according to aviation-data firm Cirium. Indian low-cost airline IndiGo has nearly 140, Air China has 43, Germany’s Lufthansa has 37, and Mexico’s Volaris has 35.
Alliance to help Maine defense contractors that are struggling to fill jobs
Among U.S. carriers, Spirit Airlines received 34 of the planes, Hawaiian Airlines has 18 and JetBlue Airways 16, according to Cirium.
On a call with analysts, RTX Chief Operating Officer Christopher Calio said that the problem does not affect current production, and Pratt will continue to produce new engines and spare parts, but the life of parts made between late 2015 and mid-2021 could be reduced.
Pratt had planned to schedule “enhanced inspections” during normal maintenance stops, but based on recent discoveries, it decided that the inspections — focused on high-pressure turbine disks — needed to be speeded up, Calio said. He said the company is developing plans to conduct the inspections as quickly as possible.
The disclosure was made as RTX, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, reported second-quarter earnings of $1.3 billion, up 2% from a year earlier. After adjusting for one-time items, the profit came to $1.29 per share, beating the $1.18 consensus forecast of analysts.
Revenue rose 12% to $18.3 billion, topping analysts’ prediction of less than $17.7 billion, according to a FactSet survey. Pratt accounted for about one-third of sales.
PP
Re: More Boeing Bad News
Better info here:
Airbus A320neo Pratt Engine Issues to Ground 650 Planes Next Year
https://airlineweekly.skift.com/2023/09 ... next-year/
The quality issues affecting Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines on Airbus A320neo-family aircraft will ground 600 to 650 aircraft globally next year, the latest setback to the airline industry’s recovery and growth from the pandemic.
Executives at RTX, which owns P&W, said Monday that an average of 350 A320neo-family planes will be grounded as geared turbofan engine inspections and repairs occur. The number is expected to peak at 600-650 aircraft in the first half of 2024, or about half of the global fleet of the 1,360 geared turbofan-equipped A320neos, Cirium fleet data shows.
To put it in perspective, the largest airline in the world, American Airlines, only has 925 mainline planes.
“We don’t like the situation but think it’s the right thing to do,” Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Aerospace Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. He added that there will be “a lot of consequences on the [airline] industry.”
RTX first unveiled the production quality issues in geared turbofan engines in July. At the time, it said roughly 1,200 engines needed to be inspected within 12 months. The company has since determined that the quality issues affect some 3,000 engines with an estimated 600-700 likely needing repair. Aircraft will be grounded during repairs, which involves removing engines from the wings, and will take through 2026. The majority of inspections and repairs will occur next year. Repairs will take more than half a year, or 250-300 days.
“This will have significant impact on us, and any other A320neo operator,” Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr said at the U.S. Chamber summit Tuesday.
Lufthansa expects roughly 20 of its A320neos will be grounded — up from just three aircraft in July — at any given time through next year, he said. The airline will backfill that lost capacity by extending the lives of older A320ceo aircraft, as well as wet-leasing narrowbody planes from other airlines.
“There are less aircraft available in total than we were expecting,” Spohr said. “We were expecting to grow that by about double digit, and maybe it’s a little less.”
Not every airline is able to maintain its capacity outlook save a percentage point or two. European discounter Wizz Air, which operates an all-Airbus narrowbody fleet, on Monday cut its capacity growth forecast by 10 percentage points for the six months ending next March.
Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, IndiGo, and Spirit Airlines all previously said the geared turbofan engine inspections would affect them this year and next. They have not provided new guidance following RTX’s update.
At the U.S. Chamber summit, JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes declined to comment on the impact of the latest geared turbofan engine update.
Fitch Ratings on Tuesday described the situation as “material” for Spirit, which operated 80 A320neo-family aircraft at the end of June, in the September quarter. The rating agency expects the issues for Spirit to continue into 2024.
These geared fan engines sound good on paper but they have been crap since day one.
Indian airlines have a bunch of them as does Spirit here.
Spirit had a few parked at DFW in various states of engine repairs/changes for months and months when they first came out.
PP
Airbus A320neo Pratt Engine Issues to Ground 650 Planes Next Year
https://airlineweekly.skift.com/2023/09 ... next-year/
The quality issues affecting Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan engines on Airbus A320neo-family aircraft will ground 600 to 650 aircraft globally next year, the latest setback to the airline industry’s recovery and growth from the pandemic.
Executives at RTX, which owns P&W, said Monday that an average of 350 A320neo-family planes will be grounded as geared turbofan engine inspections and repairs occur. The number is expected to peak at 600-650 aircraft in the first half of 2024, or about half of the global fleet of the 1,360 geared turbofan-equipped A320neos, Cirium fleet data shows.
To put it in perspective, the largest airline in the world, American Airlines, only has 925 mainline planes.
“We don’t like the situation but think it’s the right thing to do,” Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Aerospace Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. He added that there will be “a lot of consequences on the [airline] industry.”
RTX first unveiled the production quality issues in geared turbofan engines in July. At the time, it said roughly 1,200 engines needed to be inspected within 12 months. The company has since determined that the quality issues affect some 3,000 engines with an estimated 600-700 likely needing repair. Aircraft will be grounded during repairs, which involves removing engines from the wings, and will take through 2026. The majority of inspections and repairs will occur next year. Repairs will take more than half a year, or 250-300 days.
“This will have significant impact on us, and any other A320neo operator,” Lufthansa Group CEO Carsten Spohr said at the U.S. Chamber summit Tuesday.
Lufthansa expects roughly 20 of its A320neos will be grounded — up from just three aircraft in July — at any given time through next year, he said. The airline will backfill that lost capacity by extending the lives of older A320ceo aircraft, as well as wet-leasing narrowbody planes from other airlines.
“There are less aircraft available in total than we were expecting,” Spohr said. “We were expecting to grow that by about double digit, and maybe it’s a little less.”
Not every airline is able to maintain its capacity outlook save a percentage point or two. European discounter Wizz Air, which operates an all-Airbus narrowbody fleet, on Monday cut its capacity growth forecast by 10 percentage points for the six months ending next March.
Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, IndiGo, and Spirit Airlines all previously said the geared turbofan engine inspections would affect them this year and next. They have not provided new guidance following RTX’s update.
At the U.S. Chamber summit, JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes declined to comment on the impact of the latest geared turbofan engine update.
Fitch Ratings on Tuesday described the situation as “material” for Spirit, which operated 80 A320neo-family aircraft at the end of June, in the September quarter. The rating agency expects the issues for Spirit to continue into 2024.
These geared fan engines sound good on paper but they have been crap since day one.
Indian airlines have a bunch of them as does Spirit here.
Spirit had a few parked at DFW in various states of engine repairs/changes for months and months when they first came out.
PP
Re: More Boeing Bad News
I always thought the big plus of a jet was the lack of moving parts. Just that one big spinny thing (occasionally two) in the middle, and a few valves. Chucking in a load of gears is just asking for more trouble, although I guess they're using the record of turbopros as a starting point for putting the gears in the engine instead of on the end of it.
Re: More Boeing Bad News
FBI tells Alaska Airlines passengers they may be ‘victim of a crime’
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/business ... index.html
Passengers on board the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that suffered a terrifying midair blowout in January have received a letter from the FBI saying they may be victims “of a crime.”
Attorney Mark Lindquist, who represents multiple passengers that were on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, shared with CNN the letter that the FBI office in Seattle sent to passengers on Tuesday.
“I’m contacting you because we have identified you as a possible victim of a crime,” the letter reads in part. It also notes that the FBI is currently investigating the case.
“My clients and I welcome the DOJ investigation,” Lindquist told CNN, “We want accountability. We want answers. We want safer Boeing planes. And a DOJ investigation helps advance our goals.”
Attorney Robert Clifford, who represents many family members of the 2019 crash victims of a Boeing 737 Max jet flown by Ethiopian Air as well as some of the recent Alaska Air passengers, said some of his clients on Alaska Air also got the letter notifying them that they could be crime victims.
“I’m certain everyone on the plane will be getting this letter,” he told CNN. “The families of the Ethiopian Air victims should have also been considered crime victims.”
In addition to the letters that went out to passengers, flight attendants aboard Alaska Air Flight 1282 have been interviewed by investigators from the Justice Department, according to people familiar with the situation.
The letters were first reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
“The FBI does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” FBI Seattle’s Public Affairs Office wrote in an email to CNN, citing Department of Justice policy.
Boeing’s potential criminal liability
But Justice opened a probe into the incident and Boeing in February, CNN has previously reported. That investigation carries the potential to upend a controversial deferred prosecution agreement that Boeing reached with the Justice Department in the final month of the Trump administration.
Tha settlement, which was criticized by families of crash victims and members of Congress, was over charges that Boeing defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration during the original certification process for the 737 Max jets. Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion as part of that settlement, but most of that was money Boeing had already agreed to pay to the airlines that had purchased the Max jets grounded for 20 months following the Ethiopian Air crash and an earlier crash in Indonesia.
The deferred prosecution agreement could have ended the threat of Boeing facing criminal liability for those earlier fraud charges. But the Alaska Air incident came just days before a three-year probation-like period was due to end, so the criminal probe could expose Boeing to charges not just for the Alaska Air incident but also the earlier allegations of criminal wrongdoing.
Boeing declined to comment.
On January 5, 171 passengers and six crew members boarded the flight in Portland, Oregon, bound for Ontario, California. Abruptly after take off, a panel of the fuselage called the “door plug” blew off, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing.
A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the jet, which was delivered to Alaska by Boeing in October, had left Boeing’s factory without the four bolts needed to keep the door plug in place.
While the NTSB has yet to assess blame for the missing bolts, it has criticized Boeing for not having the documentation available showing who worked on the door plug when the plane was at Boeing’s factory.
The FAA has also found multiple problems with production practices of both Boeing and its major supplier Spirit AeroSystems following a six-week audit of Boeing triggered by the January 5 door plug blowout.
Subpoenas from the Justice Department were also recently sent seeking documents and information that may be related to Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems and mentions the “door plug” that is used in the Boeing 737 Max 9s, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told investors last month that “We caused the problem, and we understand that. Whatever conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened.”
The development comes the same week Boeing said it will report massive losses in the first quarter stemming from the Alaska Airlines incident.
The losses will be in part because of compensation to airlines that owned the Max 9, which was grounded for three weeks after the incident. Alaska Air CEO Ben Minicucci told investors last month that the incident cost his airline about $150 million, and that it expected to be compensated for those losses by Boeing.
The other contributors to losses will be “all the things we’re doing around the factory,” Chief Financial Officer Brian West said on Wednesday, leading to slower production at its 737 Max plant in Renton Washington.
PP
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/22/business ... index.html
Passengers on board the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 that suffered a terrifying midair blowout in January have received a letter from the FBI saying they may be victims “of a crime.”
Attorney Mark Lindquist, who represents multiple passengers that were on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, shared with CNN the letter that the FBI office in Seattle sent to passengers on Tuesday.
“I’m contacting you because we have identified you as a possible victim of a crime,” the letter reads in part. It also notes that the FBI is currently investigating the case.
“My clients and I welcome the DOJ investigation,” Lindquist told CNN, “We want accountability. We want answers. We want safer Boeing planes. And a DOJ investigation helps advance our goals.”
Attorney Robert Clifford, who represents many family members of the 2019 crash victims of a Boeing 737 Max jet flown by Ethiopian Air as well as some of the recent Alaska Air passengers, said some of his clients on Alaska Air also got the letter notifying them that they could be crime victims.
“I’m certain everyone on the plane will be getting this letter,” he told CNN. “The families of the Ethiopian Air victims should have also been considered crime victims.”
In addition to the letters that went out to passengers, flight attendants aboard Alaska Air Flight 1282 have been interviewed by investigators from the Justice Department, according to people familiar with the situation.
The letters were first reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.
“The FBI does not confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” FBI Seattle’s Public Affairs Office wrote in an email to CNN, citing Department of Justice policy.
Boeing’s potential criminal liability
But Justice opened a probe into the incident and Boeing in February, CNN has previously reported. That investigation carries the potential to upend a controversial deferred prosecution agreement that Boeing reached with the Justice Department in the final month of the Trump administration.
Tha settlement, which was criticized by families of crash victims and members of Congress, was over charges that Boeing defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration during the original certification process for the 737 Max jets. Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion as part of that settlement, but most of that was money Boeing had already agreed to pay to the airlines that had purchased the Max jets grounded for 20 months following the Ethiopian Air crash and an earlier crash in Indonesia.
The deferred prosecution agreement could have ended the threat of Boeing facing criminal liability for those earlier fraud charges. But the Alaska Air incident came just days before a three-year probation-like period was due to end, so the criminal probe could expose Boeing to charges not just for the Alaska Air incident but also the earlier allegations of criminal wrongdoing.
Boeing declined to comment.
On January 5, 171 passengers and six crew members boarded the flight in Portland, Oregon, bound for Ontario, California. Abruptly after take off, a panel of the fuselage called the “door plug” blew off, forcing the pilots to make an emergency landing.
A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found that the jet, which was delivered to Alaska by Boeing in October, had left Boeing’s factory without the four bolts needed to keep the door plug in place.
While the NTSB has yet to assess blame for the missing bolts, it has criticized Boeing for not having the documentation available showing who worked on the door plug when the plane was at Boeing’s factory.
The FAA has also found multiple problems with production practices of both Boeing and its major supplier Spirit AeroSystems following a six-week audit of Boeing triggered by the January 5 door plug blowout.
Subpoenas from the Justice Department were also recently sent seeking documents and information that may be related to Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems and mentions the “door plug” that is used in the Boeing 737 Max 9s, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun told investors last month that “We caused the problem, and we understand that. Whatever conclusions are reached, Boeing is accountable for what happened.”
The development comes the same week Boeing said it will report massive losses in the first quarter stemming from the Alaska Airlines incident.
The losses will be in part because of compensation to airlines that owned the Max 9, which was grounded for three weeks after the incident. Alaska Air CEO Ben Minicucci told investors last month that the incident cost his airline about $150 million, and that it expected to be compensated for those losses by Boeing.
The other contributors to losses will be “all the things we’re doing around the factory,” Chief Financial Officer Brian West said on Wednesday, leading to slower production at its 737 Max plant in Renton Washington.
PP
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Woody
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Re: More Boeing Bad News
A bit of an unfortunate phrase under the current circumstancesUnited Airlines, for its part, is not waiting around for Max 10s. The US carrier has asked Boeing to stop building it Max 10s and build Max 9s instead, and is also looking at plugging the gaps with Airbus planes, provided it makes financial sense.
When all else fails, read the instructions.
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Fox3WheresMyBanana
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Re: More Boeing Bad News
I wonder how many passengers will be "impacted"?
Re: More Boeing Bad News
All change!! Heads (slowly) rolling at Boeing. https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... el-blowout
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Fox3WheresMyBanana
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Re: More Boeing Bad News
Well, good with the top two, but Stan Deal, the Head of the Commercial Airplane division, an engineer, has been replaced with Stephanie Pope, an accountant.
As long as she is just keeping things ticking over for a brief period because she is most familiar with the new job, fine.
But Boeing's problems I think are due to too many engineers being replaced with accountants.
As long as she is just keeping things ticking over for a brief period because she is most familiar with the new job, fine.
But Boeing's problems I think are due to too many engineers being replaced with accountants.
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Rwy in Sight
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Re: More Boeing Bad News
I couldn't resist to point out maybe the Boeing Commerical Aircraft Divsion might need a divine intervention.
Re: More Boeing Bad News
SPEEA Wins Reinstatement for Seven Boeing Pilots in Labor Case
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/speea-wi ... 00931.html
SEATTLE, March 26, 2024--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Boeing Company violated federal labor law by retaliating against seven of its instructor pilots who had engaged in union activity, a federal administrative law judge ruled.
"I find that Boeing was motivated by anti-union animus and was punishing its (Flight Training Airplane) pilots for their union activity in April 2020," Judge Gerald M. Etchingham wrote in his order issued March 22 for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). "No other rational explanation exists."
The judge ordered Boeing to offer the seven pilots their jobs back, pay them for lost wages and benefits and restore their positions – which had been outsourced to non-union contractors – to the company’s full-time, union-represented payroll.
"The ruling is a resounding win for our union-represented pilots," said Ray Goforth, the executive director of SPEEA, IFPTE Local 2001, which represented the Boeing instructor pilots before their work was outsourced to third-party contractors. The union pursued the federal complaint on their behalf.
"Boeing systematically dismantled the pilot training safety system that had served the company and its customers well for decades," Goforth said. "They stripped the safety system for parts, pocketed the savings, then contracted out the remaining pieces to pretend that no substantive changes had occurred."
Link to NLRB ruling
Background
In his order, Etchingham ruled that Boeing "looks to have prioritized cutting costs and ridding itself of a group of union instructor pilots it has historically treated badly."
The pilots were employed by Boeing to teach airline flight crews how to fly the company’s planes. They were based at Boeing’s former Commercial Airplanes headquarters in Renton, Washington. One of their primary jobs was to deliver newly built aircraft to customers. They would then spend one to two months flying side by side with the airline pilots to train them how to fly their new planes.
These Flight Training Airplane (FTA) pilots, along with Flight Technical and Safety (FTS) pilots, make up the SPEEA Pilots and Instructors Unit (SPIU). This unit would work with airlines to develop "gold-standard" training plans for each customer airline.
Boeing and SPEEA negotiated the first joint contract for the two pilot groups in 2013. During those talks, Boeing’s negotiators announced the company was moving the jobs of about 20 of those pilots to Miami, which would take them out of the bargaining unit. After years of bad treatment by management, many expressed a feeling of having a target on their back due to their status as union members. Discouraged, some pilots filed a motion to decertify their union in 2015. Despite active encouragement from Boeing management, that motion failed.
After this failed decertification, Boeing aggressively accelerated its hiring of third-party temp pilots to take over some of the work the union pilots were doing. Beginning in 2018, Boeing conducted "gross and explicit salary discrimination," between its non-union and union pilots, according to the ruling.
This led to several of the unionized pilots transferring out of SPIU to take better-paying, non-union pilot jobs within Boeing, further eroding the number of SPIU-represented pilots.
In 2019, Boeing announced plans to hire the first new FTA pilots to the group in nearly six years. This was part of a plan where FTA would provide training and oversight to the work of the third-party contractor pilots and ensure they were up to a Boeing "gold-standard" level. As Boeing’s 737 MAX program began to resume deliveries after the grounding of the aircraft and the COVID-19 pandemic, "volumes of work" was available to these pilots, the judge wrote.
In 2020, the pilots – citing frustration over the gaps in pay and access to flying between them and their non-union counterparts – held a second vote on whether to decertify their union, again with support from Boeing management.
Again, the vote failed. Boeing promptly announced it was cancelling the plan to bring pilot training back to the "gold standard." Instead, the company would lay off the seven unionized instructor pilots, and then hire 70 contractor pilots to replace them.
Boeing argued these moves were financially motivated. Judge Etchingham said he found "Boeing’s business justification for the layoff of seven FTA pilots to be entirely lacking in credibility and comprised entirely of pretext."
"I do not think Boeing would normally sacrifice safety and quality of its instructor pilots to save money," he wrote, "especially after the 2018 and 2019 MAX crashes put the company under a microscope."
Ruling
"Boeing’s use of the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext for its layoff of the seven FTA pilots is a classic bait-and-switch guise, where for years Boeing whittled away this small group of gold-standard trained, blue-badge employees with its anti-union animus and wore down the (union) pilots," Etchingham wrote.
Along with reinstating the seven pilots with full back pay and benefits, dating back to 2020, Boeing must also reimburse the pilots for any expenses spent trying to get new jobs and any adverse tax implications from their illegal layoff, the judge ruled.
At its Commercial Airplane facilities in the Seattle/Renton area, Boeing must also post notices telling workers it will "not lay you off because of your union membership or support" and pledging the company will "not divert your work to a subcontractor" because of union activities.
SPEEA represents more than 19,000 engineers, scientists, pilots and technical workers at Boeing in Washington, Kansas, California, Oregon and Utah and Spirit AeroSystems facilities in Kansas.
PP
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/speea-wi ... 00931.html
SEATTLE, March 26, 2024--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Boeing Company violated federal labor law by retaliating against seven of its instructor pilots who had engaged in union activity, a federal administrative law judge ruled.
"I find that Boeing was motivated by anti-union animus and was punishing its (Flight Training Airplane) pilots for their union activity in April 2020," Judge Gerald M. Etchingham wrote in his order issued March 22 for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). "No other rational explanation exists."
The judge ordered Boeing to offer the seven pilots their jobs back, pay them for lost wages and benefits and restore their positions – which had been outsourced to non-union contractors – to the company’s full-time, union-represented payroll.
"The ruling is a resounding win for our union-represented pilots," said Ray Goforth, the executive director of SPEEA, IFPTE Local 2001, which represented the Boeing instructor pilots before their work was outsourced to third-party contractors. The union pursued the federal complaint on their behalf.
"Boeing systematically dismantled the pilot training safety system that had served the company and its customers well for decades," Goforth said. "They stripped the safety system for parts, pocketed the savings, then contracted out the remaining pieces to pretend that no substantive changes had occurred."
Link to NLRB ruling
Background
In his order, Etchingham ruled that Boeing "looks to have prioritized cutting costs and ridding itself of a group of union instructor pilots it has historically treated badly."
The pilots were employed by Boeing to teach airline flight crews how to fly the company’s planes. They were based at Boeing’s former Commercial Airplanes headquarters in Renton, Washington. One of their primary jobs was to deliver newly built aircraft to customers. They would then spend one to two months flying side by side with the airline pilots to train them how to fly their new planes.
These Flight Training Airplane (FTA) pilots, along with Flight Technical and Safety (FTS) pilots, make up the SPEEA Pilots and Instructors Unit (SPIU). This unit would work with airlines to develop "gold-standard" training plans for each customer airline.
Boeing and SPEEA negotiated the first joint contract for the two pilot groups in 2013. During those talks, Boeing’s negotiators announced the company was moving the jobs of about 20 of those pilots to Miami, which would take them out of the bargaining unit. After years of bad treatment by management, many expressed a feeling of having a target on their back due to their status as union members. Discouraged, some pilots filed a motion to decertify their union in 2015. Despite active encouragement from Boeing management, that motion failed.
After this failed decertification, Boeing aggressively accelerated its hiring of third-party temp pilots to take over some of the work the union pilots were doing. Beginning in 2018, Boeing conducted "gross and explicit salary discrimination," between its non-union and union pilots, according to the ruling.
This led to several of the unionized pilots transferring out of SPIU to take better-paying, non-union pilot jobs within Boeing, further eroding the number of SPIU-represented pilots.
In 2019, Boeing announced plans to hire the first new FTA pilots to the group in nearly six years. This was part of a plan where FTA would provide training and oversight to the work of the third-party contractor pilots and ensure they were up to a Boeing "gold-standard" level. As Boeing’s 737 MAX program began to resume deliveries after the grounding of the aircraft and the COVID-19 pandemic, "volumes of work" was available to these pilots, the judge wrote.
In 2020, the pilots – citing frustration over the gaps in pay and access to flying between them and their non-union counterparts – held a second vote on whether to decertify their union, again with support from Boeing management.
Again, the vote failed. Boeing promptly announced it was cancelling the plan to bring pilot training back to the "gold standard." Instead, the company would lay off the seven unionized instructor pilots, and then hire 70 contractor pilots to replace them.
Boeing argued these moves were financially motivated. Judge Etchingham said he found "Boeing’s business justification for the layoff of seven FTA pilots to be entirely lacking in credibility and comprised entirely of pretext."
"I do not think Boeing would normally sacrifice safety and quality of its instructor pilots to save money," he wrote, "especially after the 2018 and 2019 MAX crashes put the company under a microscope."
Ruling
"Boeing’s use of the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext for its layoff of the seven FTA pilots is a classic bait-and-switch guise, where for years Boeing whittled away this small group of gold-standard trained, blue-badge employees with its anti-union animus and wore down the (union) pilots," Etchingham wrote.
Along with reinstating the seven pilots with full back pay and benefits, dating back to 2020, Boeing must also reimburse the pilots for any expenses spent trying to get new jobs and any adverse tax implications from their illegal layoff, the judge ruled.
At its Commercial Airplane facilities in the Seattle/Renton area, Boeing must also post notices telling workers it will "not lay you off because of your union membership or support" and pledging the company will "not divert your work to a subcontractor" because of union activities.
SPEEA represents more than 19,000 engineers, scientists, pilots and technical workers at Boeing in Washington, Kansas, California, Oregon and Utah and Spirit AeroSystems facilities in Kansas.
PP
Re: More Boeing Bad News
A whistleblower claims that Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner is flawed. The FAA is investigating
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/09/business ... index.html
CNN
—
Federal authorities say they’re investigating Boeing after a whistleblower repeatedly raised concerns with two widebody jet models, and claimed the company retaliated against him.
Whistleblower Sam Salehpour, a Boeing engineer, alleges that Boeing took shortcuts when manufacturing its 777 and 787 Dreamliner jets, and that the risks could become catastrophic as the airplanes age. The New York Times was first to report the whistleblower complaint.
His formal complaint to the Federal Aviation Administration, filed in January and made public on Tuesday, is not specific to the newer 737 Max jet that has been grounded twice by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Salehpour on Tuesday said his complaint raises “two quality issues that may dramatically reduce the life of the planes.”
“I am doing this not because I want Boeing to fail, but because I want it to succeed and prevent crashes from happening,” Salehpour told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. “The truth is Boeing can’t keep going the way it is. It needs to do a little bit better, I think.”
In response to the complaint, the FAA said it investigates all whistleblower complaints.
The FAA has interviewed Salehpour as part of its investigation, his attorney Lisa Banks said. The FAA said it investigates all whistleblower complaints.
“Voluntary reporting without fear of reprisal is a critical component in aviation safety,” the FAA said. “We strongly encourage everyone in the aviation industry to share information.”
A Senate subcommittee will also take up the concerns at a hearing next week.
Boeing did not immediately comment on the claims about the 777, but disputed Salehpour’s concerns about the 787.
“These claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft,” the company said in a statement.
Gaps in the Dreamliner
Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner planes, which entered service in 2011, could have 50-year lifespans – around 44,000 flights each, the company says.
But Salehpour’s complaint alleges crews assembling the plane failed to properly fill tiny gaps when joining separately manufactured parts of the fuselage. That puts more wear on the plane, shortening its lifespan and risking “catastrophic” failure, Salehpour’s attorneys alleged.
The allegations aren’t entirely new: For nearly two years starting in 2021, the FAA and Boeing halted deliveries of the new Dreamliners while it looked into the gaps. Boeing said it made changes in its manufacturing process, and deliveries ultimately resumed.
“We incorporated the join inspection and verification activity into our production system so that airplanes coming off of the production line meet these specifications,” Boeing said.
The 787 Dreamliners were not grounded, but the FAA twice investigated questions about quality control during the jet’s assembly process. The company maintained that the planes were and are safe to fly.
Salehpour’s attorneys said the FAA was surprised to discover through his complaint that the gaps were still an issue.
“I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align,” Salehpour said. “By jumping up and down, you’re deforming parts so that the holes align temporarily … and that’s not how you build an airplane.”
Alleged retaliation led to another discovery
Salehpour said Boeing retaliated against him after he raised another concern about the 787 and a different plane model.
The whistleblower complaint said he pointed out to management the existence of drilling issues with the 787, and was then “ignored and ultimately transferred out of the 787 program to the 777 program.”
In his new role, Salehpour said he discovered subpar work with aligning body pieces, and pressure on engineers to green-light work they have not yet inspected.
In all, Salehpour said the issues involve more than 400 777s and 1,000 787s.
Boeing (BA) shares fell 2% Tuesday.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
PP
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/09/business ... index.html
CNN
—
Federal authorities say they’re investigating Boeing after a whistleblower repeatedly raised concerns with two widebody jet models, and claimed the company retaliated against him.
Whistleblower Sam Salehpour, a Boeing engineer, alleges that Boeing took shortcuts when manufacturing its 777 and 787 Dreamliner jets, and that the risks could become catastrophic as the airplanes age. The New York Times was first to report the whistleblower complaint.
His formal complaint to the Federal Aviation Administration, filed in January and made public on Tuesday, is not specific to the newer 737 Max jet that has been grounded twice by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Salehpour on Tuesday said his complaint raises “two quality issues that may dramatically reduce the life of the planes.”
“I am doing this not because I want Boeing to fail, but because I want it to succeed and prevent crashes from happening,” Salehpour told reporters on a conference call Tuesday. “The truth is Boeing can’t keep going the way it is. It needs to do a little bit better, I think.”
In response to the complaint, the FAA said it investigates all whistleblower complaints.
The FAA has interviewed Salehpour as part of its investigation, his attorney Lisa Banks said. The FAA said it investigates all whistleblower complaints.
“Voluntary reporting without fear of reprisal is a critical component in aviation safety,” the FAA said. “We strongly encourage everyone in the aviation industry to share information.”
A Senate subcommittee will also take up the concerns at a hearing next week.
Boeing did not immediately comment on the claims about the 777, but disputed Salehpour’s concerns about the 787.
“These claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate and do not represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft,” the company said in a statement.
Gaps in the Dreamliner
Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner planes, which entered service in 2011, could have 50-year lifespans – around 44,000 flights each, the company says.
But Salehpour’s complaint alleges crews assembling the plane failed to properly fill tiny gaps when joining separately manufactured parts of the fuselage. That puts more wear on the plane, shortening its lifespan and risking “catastrophic” failure, Salehpour’s attorneys alleged.
The allegations aren’t entirely new: For nearly two years starting in 2021, the FAA and Boeing halted deliveries of the new Dreamliners while it looked into the gaps. Boeing said it made changes in its manufacturing process, and deliveries ultimately resumed.
“We incorporated the join inspection and verification activity into our production system so that airplanes coming off of the production line meet these specifications,” Boeing said.
The 787 Dreamliners were not grounded, but the FAA twice investigated questions about quality control during the jet’s assembly process. The company maintained that the planes were and are safe to fly.
Salehpour’s attorneys said the FAA was surprised to discover through his complaint that the gaps were still an issue.
“I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align,” Salehpour said. “By jumping up and down, you’re deforming parts so that the holes align temporarily … and that’s not how you build an airplane.”
Alleged retaliation led to another discovery
Salehpour said Boeing retaliated against him after he raised another concern about the 787 and a different plane model.
The whistleblower complaint said he pointed out to management the existence of drilling issues with the 787, and was then “ignored and ultimately transferred out of the 787 program to the 777 program.”
In his new role, Salehpour said he discovered subpar work with aligning body pieces, and pressure on engineers to green-light work they have not yet inspected.
In all, Salehpour said the issues involve more than 400 777s and 1,000 787s.
Boeing (BA) shares fell 2% Tuesday.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
PP
Re: More Boeing Bad News
Will there be an "Air Facility Crash Investigation" into the Boeing ... mess? - and how many seasons? 