Boeing 737 MAX family NEWS ONLY

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Bloomberg reporting United CEO Kirby has told Boeing to switch their MAX-10 orders to MAX-9 as they now think the MAX-10 is a project that will take two decades to iron out its issues (so presumably now dont think they will be delivered before the end of the decade). Bloomberg says United have sourced 36 A321's from lessors between 2025-27, they are also in talks with Airbus about purchasing their own aircraft.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...se-to-gaining-airbus-jets-on-boeing-ba-delays
 
United are denying they were aware of the damage in flight saying they discovered the damage on landing.

This afternoon, United flight 433 landed safely at its scheduled destination at Rogue Valley International/Medford Airport. After the aircraft was parked at the gate, it was discovered to be missing an external panel. We’ll conduct a thorough examination of the plane and perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service. We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred.
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WatcherZero said:
United are denying they were aware of the damage in flight saying they discovered the damage on landing.



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That (much clearer) picture puts the lost panel at just aft of the main landing gear. That whole area should be unpressurized, so I'm not sure how exactly the panel failed and got ripped off. You can see a lot of the screws still in the nutplates around the lower side, and no screws at all along the top of that panel.

You can also see that what's left of the panel has slid a good 1/2" aft (look at the screw head at the top right)
 
Yeah there is a good amount of screws all the way around so I dont think it was unsecured. Possibly a bird strike or FOD strike on takeoff lifted the panel enough for the airflow to catch it.
 
WatcherZero said:
Yeah there is a good amount of screws all the way around so I dont think it was unsecured. Possibly a bird strike or FOD strike on takeoff lifted the panel enough for the airflow to catch it.
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There's usually some blood streaking after a bird strike, so a FOD strike is more likely (of the two)
 
TomcatViP said:
https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/passengers-boeing-flight-share-media-got-wrong-19088965.php
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I'm not sure how much Alaska should be held liable.

The Alaska mechanics don't open up the interior and remove all the insulation to be able to inspect the area around the door plugs except during heavy maintenance phase checks about every 2 years, when they replace the interior cloth anyways (and Alaska may hire that out to a specialist Repair Station, I'm not sure who does their heavy checks). According to the wiki article, the aircraft was all of 2 months old when this happened, so no door/plug checks would have been due to happen yet.
The aircraft involved was a Boeing 737 MAX 9 (typically referred to as model 737-9 in official FAA documents) with manufacturer's serial number 67501, fuselage line number 8789, and registered as N704AL. It was around two months old at the time of the accident: it first flew on October 15, 2023, and was delivered to Alaska Airlines on October 31, and entered service on November 11.[1][2][3] At the time of the accident, the aircraft had logged 510 total flight hours and 154 flights.[4]
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As to the pressurization alarm claims, that's also stuff that gets looked at during heavy checks unless pressurization completely fails during preflight (in which case the plane goes into the shop to figure out WTF immediately and they find a new plane to fly).

Airlines rely on the manufacturers to deliver the aircraft in flightworthy condition. It would be approximately 1-2 weeks for the plane to have the interior ripped out for Alaska mechanics to inspect the assembly and put the plane back together. Oh, and that's with mechanics working around the clock.

Sorry, no not buying Alaska's liability in this.
 
Financial report from Boeing, they expect to burn $4bn to $4.5bn in the first quarter of this year, higher than they expected in January and for the aviation division to experience a -20% operating margin in the first quarter which will improve during the year but still end the year overall negative. They will also fail to reach even the FAA capped production limit of 38 aircraft a month due to lower backlog deliveries, production delays and shortage of working capital. Separately its reported that disposal of some defence business assets that they were already considering last year are back on the agenda again to raise capital with divisions being considered for disposal including its Digital Receiver Technology Inc. unit (which makes radio receivers for wire taps and tracking equipment for law enforcement, federal agencies and military intelligence), Argon ST (which makes C4ISR platforms, threat detection for aviation/sub-surface/land and ELINT), and its stake in United Launch Alliance that it was originally planning to expand.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...eded-company-burns-billions-fix-security.html
 
Scott Kenny said:
As to the pressurization alarm claims,
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IIRC, one of the pressurization alarms happened on the ground, post flight, which would strongly point towards it not being an actual pressurization problem, but a problem with the pressurization alarm system itself. The NTSB had already decided it was extremely likely not to be related to the door plug loss by their January 8th press briefing, the day after arriving on site, and didn't even bother mentioning the alarms in their preliminary report, which I think is pretty indicative of how significant they think it is.
 
WatcherZero said:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...eded-company-burns-billions-fix-security.html
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It's the Mail, remember to treat anything it says with extreme caution.

Specifically that headline: "Boeing CFO ... admits prioritizing production over 'getting it done right'", which I'm pretty sure is not what he said, nor what he meant. That's almost certainly in relation to 'travelled work', where a late-running task is completed at a later station in the production line, prioritizing the production line drum beat over holding up the line to ensure tasks are finished where they're supposed to be. They've already admitted that's an issue that introduces greater risks and they might need to change their prioritization over stopping the line to finish a job vs keeping it moving and trying to do it at another station. It's not the same as saying they were more interested in getting them out of the door instead of doing the job right, more that they thought they do both and it bit them in the ass. Classic example of thinking they could have their cake and eat it.

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DWG said:
IIRC, one of the pressurization alarms happened on the ground, post flight, which would strongly point towards it not being an actual pressurization problem, but a problem with the pressurization alarm system itself. The NTSB had already decided it was extremely likely not to be related to the door plug loss by their January 8th press briefing, the day after arriving on site, and didn't even bother mentioning the alarms in their preliminary report, which I think is pretty indicative of how significant they think it is.
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IIRC, most of those alarm conditions (when it would go off) represent electrical faults in the controllers, not pressure differential alarms.

For obvious reasons, pressure differential alarms are a big deal and have a different alarm.
 
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DWG said:
It's the Mail, remember to treat anything it says with extreme caution.

Specifically that headline: "Boeing CFO ... admits prioritizing production over 'getting it done right'", which I'm pretty sure is not what he said, nor what he meant. That's almost certainly in relation to 'travelled work', where a late-running task is completed at a later station in the production line, prioritizing the production line drum beat over holding up the line to ensure tasks are finished where they're supposed to be. They've already admitted that's an issue that introduces greater risks and they might need to change their prioritization over stopping the line to finish a job vs keeping it moving and trying to do it at another station. It's not the same as saying they were more interested in getting them out of the door instead of doing the job right, more that they thought they do both and it bit them in the ass. Classic example of thinking they could have their cake and eat it.
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Same quote on Reuters and CNN

"There are changes that need to happen. There’s no doubt about it,” he noted. “We’re deliberately going slow to get this right. For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right, and that's got to change," said Chief Financial Officer Brian West
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https://www.reuters.com/business/ae...rioritized the,shares rose 2.3% on Wednesday.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/20/business/boeing-losses-alaska-air/index.html
 
DWG said:
Fair point, though I still think he's saying something different than people are hearing.
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I'm reading the quoted line as saying "they didn't ever stop the line, if something wasn't done when the line moved it was left to be done later, rather than making sure it was done before the line was allowed to move."

Possibly also why Boeing has so many planes sitting outside waiting to be delivered.
 
Scott Kenny said:
I'm reading the quoted line as saying "they didn't ever stop the line, if something wasn't done when the line moved it was left to be done later, rather than making sure it was done before the line was allowed to move."

Possibly also why Boeing has so many planes sitting outside waiting to be delivered.
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That's pretty much my interpretation, but I think a lot of non-aviation people will read it as "we didn't let safety get in the way of production", and that's not the same thing.

Flight has a fuller version that confirms he was talking about travelled work. Though I'm actually more worried by his aim to get to 38 a month before the end of the year, reported here, than I would have been taking the Mail report at face value.

https://www.flightglobal.com/airfra...-production-rate-this-year-cfo/157440.article
Interestingly he also said Boeing are going to refuse to accept fuselages from Spirit that have outstanding work to be done.
 
https://www.flightglobal.com/airlin...till-seeks-boeing-improvements/157472.article
O’Leary said the pan-European carrier was seeing fewer quality issues in its recently delivered 737 Max 8-200 narrowbodies, but noted: “We still find spanners under floorboards, missing small things [such as] handles on seats that shouldn’t be missing when you are buying a $100 million piece of kit, and that needs to change.”
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Wince. People leaving spanners behind does not speak well for Boeing's inventory control.
 
DWG said:
Interestingly he also said Boeing are going to refuse to accept fuselages from Spirit that have outstanding work to be done.
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Good, that allows for better QA isolation.

Given that at least part of the problem with this aircraft was that the plug needed to be removed for access to fix some rivets**, it would have prevented Boeing from being liable for the undocumented work and missing bolts.


** that should have been fixed at Spirit



DWG said:
https://www.flightglobal.com/airlin...till-seeks-boeing-improvements/157472.article

Wince. People leaving spanners behind does not speak well for Boeing's inventory control.
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I had several tools walk off when I was working at Tramco, mostly those really nice Snap-On ratcheting screwdrivers.

(snicker. Reminds me of when I was back from school and was doing some work around the house. Almost didn't get that ratcheting screwdriver back from my dad, so I had to buy one for him for his Birthday.)
 
Well, O'Leary would, wouldn't he? Ryanair is big on 737 MAX aircraft. As I've written before, when Boeing couldn't produce the paperwork:
Arjen said:
This. It makes me think twice before I board any recently built Boeing.
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Practically at the same time O'Leary announced he was increasing his Airbus fleet from 27 to 50 and wanted to renew or replace the leases that expired in 2029.
 
I'm sure I read somewhere that he had the idea that he could pick up some of the aircraft that the US airlines were talking about cancelling for cheap . . .

cheers,
Robin.
 
Two updates, passengers on the Alaska Air flight have been issued victim of crime numbers by the FBI this week. Secondly the FAA has said its going to take a closer look at United Airlines safety after a string of accidents by the airline involving Boeing planes, reviewing their training manuals and interviewing staff.
 
I think Mr O'Leary needs to make up his mind.
In an exclusive interview, Michael O’Leary lambasted Bruno Le Maire over “silly and ill-advised” remarks about preferring to fly in an Airbus.
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Arjen said:
I think Mr O'Leary needs to make up his mind.
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High time to pass a legislation banning local governments to pay direct and indirect subsidies to Ryanair. Minister Le Maire should know that Ryanair makes in his country as much monney from those subsidies as from fares...
 
I can understand why O'Leary would take either position. Arguing both positions in short order cancels any effect other than loss of personal credibility.
If he was a stand-up comedian, that would be fine.
 
Just seen it on BBC News, I think more of the management would need to go after all the problems concerning the 737 Max.
 
So, habemus pope-am ? Hopefully she will move mountains... she will need it. Sounds like a better Deal than Stan or the former CEO who was to Callhous...
 
Let's wait and see what happens Archibald, the next few months will be very interesting to see what happens when she fully takes over.
 
https://www.flightglobal.com/airfra...l-departs-commercial-airplanes/157509.article
In addition to Pope taking over as head of BCAG, and Calhoun going at the end of the year, the Boeing Chairman Larry Kellner is replaced immediately by Steve Mollenkopf, who has been on the board since 2020 and is ex Chairman and COO of Qualcomm, having apparently worked his way up the corporate tree there from starting as an engineer. Which is a fairly reassuring background.

Note that Pope has only been in her now previous job for a couple of months, which rather shows how much Boeing is having to make things up as it goes along.
 
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