Boeing 737 MAX family NEWS ONLY

Despite these difficulties, if you “look through the noise” the Max remains “a great aircraft”, argues O’Leary, noting that it provide the airline with 4% more seats than its Boeing 737NGs and a 16% fuel saving. Ryanair’s senior pilots have flown the Max in simulators, giving him full confidence in the equipment. “It handles brilliantly and customers are going to love it,” he asserts.
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www.flightglobal.com

Ryanair doubles down on Boeing 737 Max

Ryanair plans to purchase further Boeing 737 Max aircraft once the aircraft returns to service, in addition to taking delivery of the 210 it has already has on order or under option.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
 
Ryanair are possibly to look at savings from cancelled orders, how much less can they get the max for versus the potential issue of the type being given no rating and not continuing. Business involves taking risks.
 
The 737 MAX problems are fixable and the plane will return to service. The only questions are how long will it take, how much will the FAA twist the knife, and how badly will Boeing come out of this.
 
From Flight's article on the 777X first flight:
"Just four days after the maiden flight, the airframer released a set of annual results that illustrate the full impact (or at least the latest estimate) of the 737 Max crisis.

The total cost of the grounding is now approaching a cool $20 billion, including nearly $9 billion in customer compensation. To put that into some sort of perspective, the latter figure is roughly the same as the annual gross domestic product of Chad."

Eye-watering!

www.flightglobal.com

Why smooth 777-9 test campaign is vital for Boeing

Boeing would surely have liked to celebrate the 25 January first flight of the 777X as a comprehensive and overwhelming victory for the company. A big win for the big twin, if you like.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
 
TLDR: Boeing plans only "low rate" production for MAX in 2020, and will take several years to ramp up to the previous 57 a month. Not discussed in the article, but that has to mean major problems for the supply chain.

www.flightglobal.com

Boeing will need a ‘few years’ to recapture previous 737 Max production rate plans

Boeing anticipates its 737 Max production rate will return to previously expected levels several years after the company restarts Max production, which could come within the next several months.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
 
DWG said:
TLDR: Boeing plans only "low rate" production for MAX in 2020, and will take several years to ramp up to the previous 57 a month. Not discussed in the article, but that has to mean major problems for the supply chain.
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“When the supply chain has stability, we will make the next rate increase,” so it looks like the problems have already hit and the question now is how long it will take to rebuild.
With A320 production outstripping it for the foreseeable future, one wonders if the market might begin to saturate by then and the old rate never be reached.
 
steelpillow said:
DWG said:
TLDR: Boeing plans only "low rate" production for MAX in 2020, and will take several years to ramp up to the previous 57 a month. Not discussed in the article, but that has to mean major problems for the supply chain.
Click to expand...

“When the supply chain has stability, we will make the next rate increase,” so it looks like the problems have already hit
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I was talking about a different problem, not the ability of the supply chain to meet Boeing's production needs, but the reduced level of those needs for a period of several years likely leading to financial problems, and the potential for redundancies and even bankruptcies.
 
Last thing Boeing needed at this point was a fatal 737 crash - a Pegasus Airlines 737-800 slid off the end of the runway at Istanbul and broke into three with 1 dead and 157 injured. Almost certainly it's going to be a weather/pilot issue, but the headlines won't help.

www.theguardian.com

Three dead as plane breaks up after skidding off runway in Istanbul

Turkish officials say 179 were injured when the Pegasus Airlines aircraft crashed on landing in poor weather
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
Well, it did go down a steep slope that was at the end of the runway. At Calgary International, the end of Runway 11 is just like it and I've always sort of wondered what could happen (I worked there for four years out on the airfield)
 
kitnut617 said:
Well, it did go down a steep slope that was at the end of the runway. At Calgary International, the end of Runway 11 is just like it and I've always sort of wondered what could happen (I worked there for four years out on the airfield)
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Casualties now 3 dead and 179 injured.

Apparently it's the second time a Pegasus 737-800 has had a runway excursion at Istanbul in a month, though the previous time was to the side and without injuries, and it was also a Pegasus 737-800 in the runway excursion at Trabzon in Turkey just over a couple of years ago where the aircraft left the runway to the side and slid down a cliff towards the sea, fortunately stopping short and without injuries, but wrecking the aircraft. Weather seems to have been a factor in all three incidents.
 
Richard N said:
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He's grossly early to be declaring it gross negligence. He asks why the crew didn't land on the opposite heading, but the operational direction of the runway is set by local air traffic control. There are reasons you might need to land even running fast and long, such as a fuel emergency that makes a go-around inadvisable. A quartering wind is coming in from the quarter, that's a 45 degree segment, and quite a variation in the tailwind component from one extreme to the other.

And his points about non-American carriers are basically xenophobic. There are nations out there with weak aviation enforcement, we know who they are and Turkey's not one of them. Incidentally, Pegasus was founded by Aer Lingus, so probably inherited its cockpit practises from them. And we know the 737 MAX crashes were nothing to do with training levels, with Ethiopian having a particularly good reputation, the investigations confirming that the issue was mechanical, and the required training for all MAX pilots worldwide coming out of the investigations, which he notes, actually contradicting the point he's trying to make.
 
May I ask that we do not discuss 737-8x stuff on this thread, which is strictly for news about the MAX. Thanks.
 
www.flightglobal.com

Boeing discloses new Max software issue, sticks to mid-2020 certification goal

Boeing has uncovered a new problem with the 737 Max aircraft's flight control computers, though the company does not anticipate the issue will upend its expectation to receive Max certification in the middle of 2020.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com

Probably a minor issue, IMO, but illustrates the issues in grafting a dual redundancy system into an existing aircraft.
 
www.flightglobal.com

737 Max edging cautiously towards certification flights: FAA chief

US FAA administrator Steve Dickson has indicated that the Boeing 737 Max could commence certification flights within a few weeks, although certain issues with the aircraft still need to be resolved. But speaking during a briefing at the US embassy in London on 6 February, he stressed that there...
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
 
Grey Havoc said:
(The New York Times via msn.com)
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"In both the Max accidents and the 2009 crash, which involved a 737 NG, Boeing’s design decisions allowed a single malfunctioning sensor to trigger a powerful computer command, even though the plane was equipped with two sensors. For both models, the company had determined that if a sensor failed, pilots would recognize the problem and recover the plane. But Boeing did not provide pilots with key information that could have helped them counteract the automation error.
"After the 2009 crash, regulators required airlines to install a software update for the NG that allowed comparison of data from the two available sensors — much the same fix that Boeing has now proposed for the Max."
 
Grey Havoc said:
(The New York Times via msn.com)
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"Joe Sedor, the N.T.S.B. official who led the American team that participated in the Dutch investigation a decade ago, as well as representatives of Boeing and the F.A.A., cautioned last month against comparing the crashes, noting that they involved different systems on different planes. "

The comparison is pretty obvious at the systems level. They're both systems that gave misleading results based on a single point of failure, even though there were two sensors, because the sensors were wired so as to be individually selectable rather than dual redundant. And the justification for not needing to fix that is identical in both cases, the pilots themselves are mitigation/a form of redundancy, which is an a safety mitigation the MAX investigation has now ruled is unacceptable.

That's not so much something the NTSB should be refusing to acknowledge, as a potential spread of a now ruled unacceptable safety case to other systems on the same aircraft, and potentially other aircraft, and normally the kind of thing they'd run with.

It would be very interesting to know just how many aircraft, and how many systems aboard them, are flying based on the same safety case.
 
Grey Havoc said:
www.reuters.com

Boeing's fraying 737 MAX suppliers see capacity crunch

Boeing Co suppliers are shedding jobs and capacity to cope with a halt in 737 MAX output, but while that staves off chaos, aerospace executives worry the industry might be unable to ramp factories quickly enough when the plane wins approval to fly again.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
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I hadn't caught the story about the 787 production rate cuts mentioned here so went and hunted up the details. TLDR: in November Boeing announced a cut from 14/month to 12 by late 2020 for two years, last week they changed it to be down to 10 from 2021), but that's going to put the supply chain companies under even more pressure than just the loss of MAX work (even if it starts up again relatively quickly). Boeing has been hammering margins in the supply chain for several years, which probably means a lot of companies don't have much in reserve. I'll be amazed if someone important doesn't go under.

www.flightglobal.com

Boeing to reduce 787 production to 10 aircraft per month in 2021

Boeing has announced another 787 production rate cut, saying it plans to lower output of the widebody to 10 aircraft monthly by early 2021.
www.flightglobal.com www.flightglobal.com
 
www.thetimes.co.uk

Norwegian blames Boeing 737 Max as it cuts capacity in bid to fly back into profit

Norwegian Air has said it is “unrealistic” to expect the delivery of the Boeing 737 Max aircraft it has ordered this year, as the loss-making budget airline reported that it will further cut services in an attempt to get itself into the black.Norwegian yesterday reported losses of NOK1.68 billion (
www.thetimes.co.uk www.thetimes.co.uk
(Registration may be required)
 
steelpillow said:
Quickly addressed and not thought to add to any delays, but still:
www.bbc.co.uk

737 Max: Debris found in new planes' fuel tanks

The discovery raises fresh concerns about potential safety issues for the US plane-making giant.
www.bbc.co.uk
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Given the FOD problems with the KC-46, this is possibly more damaging than it looks on the surface. It suggests there might be systemic issues in Boeing's production practises, and that could encourage FAA to be more assertive on individual aircraft acceptance issues, where they've already taken the MAX paperwork back in house.
 
Reading between the lines here which obviously has its drawbacks, could this be a case of supervisors pushing for jobs to be done too quickly leading to disjointed workplace practice?
 
Foo Fighter said:
Reading between the lines here which obviously has its drawbacks, could this be a case of supervisors pushing for jobs to be done too quickly leading to disjointed workplace practice?
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I wouldn't be surprised at all if that was behind some of the incidents.
 
Grey Havoc said:
Foo Fighter said:
Reading between the lines here which obviously has its drawbacks, could this be a case of supervisors pushing for jobs to be done too quickly leading to disjointed workplace practice?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised at all if that was behind some of the incidents.
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New staff also. That's the problem of overstretching production capacities that you can't hold (retain due to cost).
 
Interesting claims posted at StackExchange:
aviation.stackexchange.com

What sort of debris has been found in 737 Max fuel tanks?

There have been numerous reports of Boeing finding "foreign object debris" in the fuel tanks of its 737 Max airliners. It's not clear what this debris is. It could range from a couple of missing
aviation.stackexchange.com aviation.stackexchange.com
According to one answer;

In 2017, Boeing Engineering team head resigned and he bought these complaints to FAA. As per him, Spanners, Rags, and the shavings of drill bits (Aluminium bits) Scraps and other tools were left as is in the wings and tanks.​
As per him, he took the issue to his superiors, who ignored his complaints. Then he resigned and then filed the issue with the FAA.​
Why Now? There had been some recent criticism from him in a podcast and on TV (I guess) by BBC, which was broadcasted throughout the world. As per the podcast, there were others who filed similar complaints on the brand too.​

Among the many media reports of the MAX contamination, according to The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/busines...debris-found-in-fuel-tanks-of-grounded-planes

The company has had recent issues with debris – including tools and rags – found in its 787 Dreamliners and KC-46A military refueling tankers. Those issues have led to two suspensions of deliveries of KC-46As to the US air force.​

One trusts that the FAA are staying awake.
 
Grey Havoc said:
www.reuters.com

Boeing scours idle 737 MAX plant for industrial snags

Insiders note an "eerie" calm at Boeing Co's <BA.N> 737 MAX factory, formerly a bustling hub that has helped fuel the aviation industry's record growth over the last two decades.
www.reuters.com www.reuters.com
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"Boeing is also working to reduce instances where workers leave tools, rags and other debris inside jetliners as they build them, a problem at multiple Boeing factories."​

I wonder how that compares with other manufacturers?
 
www.seattletimes.com

Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun must meet long list of goals before collecting $7 million bonus

New Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, whose total compensation over three years should total almost $35 million, will miss out on a $7 million chunk of that total unless he achieves a long list of goals set by the board. Separately,...
www.seattletimes.com www.seattletimes.com

TLDR: Boeing has made $7m of new CEO Dave Calhoun's $36m pay over the next 3 years contingent on him reaching a series of milestones by 2023, including the return to flight of the MAX and all of the c800 delivered and undelivered aircraft, and strengthening Boeing's engineering culture (plus a bunch of non-MAX related goals). Be interesting to know how they plan to judge the second of those.
 

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