Boeing plans to re-start 737 MAX production “months” before the FAA approves it to fly again, which could be as soon as early spring based on the company’s newest estimate, Boeing president and CEO Dave Calhoun said.
A new era of high speed civil flight is beckoning but are commercial supersonic or even hypersonic aircraft justifiable amid rising concerns over aviation’s environmental impact? Guy Norris and Graham Warwick discuss this and other topics from AIAA’s annual SciTech forum where the global challenge of achieving sustainable aviation took center stage.
Boeing is telling customers and suppliers that the 737 MAX will not receive its first regulatory approvals until “mid-2020,” which all but ensures MAX operators will not have the aircraft before the peak mid-year travel period ends.
Boeing is conducting taxi and final system tests of the 777-9 at its Everett, Washington site where, depending on weather and other factors, it hopes to conduct the long-awaited first flight of its new long-range 777X flagship family as early as Jan. 23.
Airbus will build another final assembly line for the A321neo in Toulouse, a consequence of high demand for the aircraft and serious production problems at its Hamburg site.
Boeing stakeholders may find out more information about the costs of the 737 MAX fiasco during the company’s Jan. 29 report on 2019 financial results. While Boeing previously identified $5.6 billion in pretax customer compensation for aircraft operators, and added $3.6 billion to the 737’s program accounting block-cost, financial analysts, consultants and others see those figures as just a beginning.
The FAA’s certification process is not fundamentally flawed and “was followed” during the Boeing 737 MAX certification, but shortcomings in key guidance, global perspective, safety assessments, and agency staffing should be addressed to improve the system, an independent committee’s report found.
Boeing will study the certification challenges of its Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) ultra-efficient airliner concept as part of a new phase of work following wind tunnel tests that prove the basic viability of the 737-class aircraft design for typical airliner cruise speeds of Mach 0.8.
Boeing ended 2019 with 380 commercial airplane deliveries—fewer than the number of 737 MAXs it has in storage—and saw its cumulative net order book shrink, largely because of a drop in MAX commitments.
Sluggish widebody demand exacerbated by several market-specific headwinds point to potential production-rate cuts for several Airbus and Boeing programs, a Bloomberg Intelligence analysis contends.
By Sean Broderick, Helen Massy-Beresford, Kurt Hofmann
The investigation into Iran’s Jan. 8 downing of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) Flight PS752 is beginning to take shape, with participants from affected countries urging transparency and a thorough probe into the disaster.
