MAX oppdatering- Curt Lewis

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

What do I know about branding, maybe nothing (but I did become President!), but if I were Boeing, I would FIX the Boeing 737 MAX, add some additional great features, & REBRAND the plane with a new name.
No product has suffered like this one. But again, what the hell do I know?

113 t

12.29 - 15. apr. 2019

American Airlines to keep entire fleet of 737 Max jets grounded until mid-August

American Airlines 737 Max planes will remain grounded until at least Aug. 19.

In an effort to plan for the busy summer travel season, all of American Airlines' 737 Max planes will remain grounded through at least Aug. 19, though American may put the jets back in the air in the event of a recertification, according to a letter from the CEO to employees at the airlines obtained by ABC News.

The grounding will amount to about 115 cancelled flights per day through Aug. 19, or about 1.5% of American's total flights each day this summer.

"We are highly confident that the MAX will be recertified prior to this time," American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said in the letter. "But by extending our cancellations through the summer, we can plan more reliably for the peak travel season."

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane being built for Spain-based Air Europa rolls toward takeoff before a test flight, Wednesday, April 10, 2019, at Boeing Field in Seattle.

Boeing, which manufactures the 737 Max 8 and Max 9, continues to work on a software fix for the grounded jets that will be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.

A preliminary report issued in early April showed the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed on March 10 suffered a damaged sensor that caused the jet's horizontal stabilizer system to kick in. Despite initially turning the system off, the pilot later turned it back on and the jet nosedived into the ground. A malfunctioning horizontal stabilizer system also caused a Lion Air flight to crash last October.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao assured members of Congress on Wednesday that once the FAA receives Boeing's proposed software enhancements for the 737 Max MCAS function "it will be thoroughly reviewed to ensure the solution has addressed all pertinent issues."

"Let me emphasize that the FAA will not approve Boeing's proposed changes until the FAA is satisfied that it safe, and preserve the preeminence of the United States as a gold standard in aviation safety," Chao said during a House Appropriations Committee hearing.

Parker emphasized his concern for safety in the letter, saying, "Families everywhere are counting on American Airlines for their summer vacations, family reunions, trips to visit friends and adventures overseas. Our commitment to each other and to our customers is to operate the safest and most reliable operation in our history."

All 737 Max jets were grounded on March 13 by the FAA, in an announcement by President Donald Trump, in the wake of two crashes in six months -- one last October off the coast of Indonesia and another in March in Ethiopia. A total of 346 people were killed in the two accidents. The FAA and U.S. carriers had held off on grounding the 737 Max even as other countries around the world did so. The U.S. finally relented days later.

American Airlines joined Southwest in announcing it would ground the 737s through August. Southwest announced its decision to ground Max jets through Aug. 5 last week.

American Airlines had previously announced on April 7 that it would cancel approximately 90 flights per day through June 5, "in an effort to provide more certainty and avoid last minute flight disruptions." The announcement Sunday extends that order.

The airline warned investors last week that the grounded jets were likely to impact first quarter revenue.

"The company now expects its first quarter total revenue per available seat mile (TRASM) to be approximately flat to up 1.0 percent year-over-year vs. its previous guidance of flat to up 2.0 percent," American Airlines said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. "This change is due primarily to the impact of the government shutdown, the grounding of the company's MAX fleet, and the removal from service of the 14 737-800 aircraft."

American is the second-largest operator of 737 Max 8s in the U.S., behind Southwest.

Boeing Has Made 96 Flights to Test Software on Troubled Max Jet, CEO Says Workers stand under the wing of a Boeing 737 MAX airplane at the Boeing Renton Factory in Renton, Washington on March 27, 2019. Boeing has made 96 flights to test a software update for its troubled 737 Max jet after recent crashes, according to the company's CEO. (DALLAS) - Boeing has made 96 flights to test a software update for its troubled 737 Max jet, according to the company's CEO. Dennis Muilenburg said Thursday that more test flights are planned in the coming weeks as Boeing attempts to convince regulators that the plane is safe. The Max was grounded by regulators around the world last month after deadly crashes involving the plane in Indonesia and Ethiopia. In both cases, faulty information from a sensor caused anti-stall automation to kick in when it wasn't needed and push the plane's nose down. Pilots struggled to counter the plane's actions but were unable to avoid crashing. Muilenburg, who spoke at a leadership forum in Dallas, said Boeing representatives have met with pilots and airline officials in the U.S., the United Kingdom, Singapore and China to discuss the changes it is making. Separately, Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts introduced a bill in Congress Thursday requiring plane makers to provide airlines with all safety equipment now considered optional and to do so without an additional charge. Markey said safety equipment that had not been installed on the Boeing 737 Max jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia might have saved them from fatal crashes. He says the equipment could have alerted crews to false readings from sensors implicated in those crashes. Markey says plane makers shouldn't treat safety features as luxuries that can generate additional fees like premium seats and extra bathrooms. Boeing says its planes are equipped with "all critical features" necessary for safety. It has said it will provide two features missing in the two crashed planes free of charge.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Faces Mounting Pressure From 737 MAX Crashes  Muilenburg Dennis Muilenburg has earned a reputation as a high-energy CEO, bicycling 140 miles a week, sometimes taking groups of employees along for high-speed bonding sessions. The 55-year-old may need every ounce of energy he's got as he faces one of the worst crises for Boeing in over 50 years: two crashes that killed 346 people, linked to the automated flight controls of the 737 MAX and leading to the grounding of the company's bestselling plane. The stakes for Boeing, and its CEO, are huge. The 737 accounts for 33% of Boeing's revenue and almost 50% of its profit, according to Berenberg analyst Andrew Gollan. Deliveries have been halted since the plane was taken out of service worldwide after the March 10 crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane, airlines are demanding compensation, and the company faces scrutiny from Congress, a Department of Transportation inquiry and a federal criminal probe. The stock (BA) has fallen 10%. Lawsuits filed by relatives of the dead and shareholders could take years to conclude. Over the past few weeks, the 34-year Boeing veteran has been traveling heavily to shore up support from airline customers and investors. An aerospace engineer by training, Muilenburg has kept a close eye on the Boeing team rewriting the faulty flight control program; last week he went up in a plane that tested out its effectiveness. But many observers are giving Boeing and Muilenburg poor marks for their public handling of the crisis. Until late last week, Muilenburg was largely invisible and the company's public statements, while expressing sympathy for family and friends of the deceased, were short on substance. "I give them a B," says Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of leadership at the Yale School of Management. Muilenburg needs to put a human face on Boeing, he says, and get out in public and engage with the media to try to correct misperceptions and address the many questions about what went wrong, even if he doesn't have ready answers to offer. Muilenburg hasn't shown the media sophistication of his predecessor, Jim McNerney, who'd previously helmed GE's prized aircraft engine division and 3M. "He's got a catastrophe as his training ground," says Sonnenfeld. Preliminary reports from the investigations into the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 in October and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 last month suggest that the pilots of both planes struggled to counter a flight control program called MCAS that erroneously pushed the planes' noses down due to malfunctioning angle-of-attack sensors. After Ethiopian investigators released their report last Thursday, Boeing put out a video statement by Muilenburg in which he said Boeing accepted responsibility for the role that MCAS played as one of the "chain links" in the two accidents. Aviation regulators in other countries have questioned the Federal Aviation Administration's certification of the MCAS system and its initial reluctance to pull the 737 MAX out of service; several have said they won't just take the FAA's word that it's safe to fly again, making it uncertain when the plane will return to the skies worldwide. With the prospects of a quick resolution fading, Boeing announced last Friday it would throttle back 737 production to 42 a month from 52-a sharp reversal from its plan to raise output to 57 by the summer. Analyst Richard Epstein of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch downgraded the stock to neutral Monday, estimating that Boeing likely won't be able to resume deliveries for six months and won't get back on pace until 2021, reducing earnings through 2023 before interest and taxes by $13.7 billion. Whether Muilenburg's job is threatened or not may depend on the stock price, says Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group. The board is loyal to Muilenburg, observers say, and his record so far has given them little reason to doubt having signed off on then-CEO and chairman McNerney's decision to promote him to the top job in 2015 at age 51. The hard-charging, detail-oriented engineer presented a strong contrast to McNerney, a liberal arts major at Yale and Harvard M.B.A. who rose up through the ranks at General Electric when it was a star factory under Jack Welch. Native to Iowa, Muilenburg grew up milking cows every morning on his family farm and graduated from Iowa State before going straight to work at Boeing. Health-conscious and rail thin, he drinks Diet Mountain Dew to get a calorie-free caffeine fix and has been known to order turkey sandwiches with no mayo. Though he's cut head count, Muilenburg has cultivated a more positive relationship with the workforce than McNerney, who clashed with the machinist's union and infamously joked of workers "cowering" from him. However, Muilenburg has followed in McNerney's footsteps with a laser focus on financial discipline, including boosting profits by wringing discounts from suppliers. Muilenburg has even gone a step further, moving to make more components in house and aiming to more than triple sales from lucrative aftermarket maintenance and services to $50 billion a year. Like his two predecessors, Muilenberg has continued to sweeten the pot for investors, devoting roughly 95% of operating cash flow to the company's steadily rising dividend and share buybacks. The stock has taken off, climbing fourfold from February 2016 to a peak of $446 at the beginning of March, compared with a 63% rise for the Dow industrials over the same period. The March selloff has only pushed the stock back to where it stood at the end of January. But to Aboulafia, the flawed design of the MCAS flight control system, combined with the continuing problems with the KC-46 tanker and delays in the crewed space-launch program are further evidence for criticism he's leveled at Boeing for almost two decades: that the company's focus on shareholder rewards has come with a "deprioritization and perhaps under-resourcing of engineering." Boeing says it's maintained R&D spending at a steady level and has a healthy corps of 56,000 engineers. The question of how MCAS was certified has raised concerns over whether Boeing has gained too cozy a relationship with the FAA; a wildcard going forward is whether any evidence of wrongdoing will emerge. If whistleblowers had any damaging information we likely would have heard it by now, says Mark Dombroff, an aviation attorney at LeClairRyan and former head of the Department of Justice's aviation division. He expects that the DoJ will seek to determine within 90 to 120 days whether there's a case to pursue. Aviation experts are optimistic that Boeing's software patch and training revisions will solve the 737 MAX's safety problems. Boeing's disclosure this week that it logged zero orders for the MAX in March generated negative headlines, but with a whopping 15,000 total narrow-body orders placed over the past seven years, there aren't really any airlines left with sizable needs, says Aboulafia, with the notable exception of Chinese carriers. Any trade deal between the U.S. and China that would change the balance of trade will likely include Boeing sales. Boeing's last major crisis came in 2013, when the 787 was grounded for three months due to battery fires, two years after the plane entered service following years of production snafus and spiraling costs. While the financial stakes were large, no lives were lost. The last time Boeing faced a safety crisis of a comparable nature to the current one was the mid-1960s, when four new 727 jets crashed in a span of four months. Like then, Boeing faces the task of convincing a fearful public that the MAX will be safe to step into again. Sonnenfeld says Muilenberg needs to take a page from James Burke, the late CEO of Johnson & Johnson, who pulled off the tall task of convincing Americans that Tylenol was still safe after seven people were killed by cyanide-laced capsules in 1982. "It's going to take the CEO to be out there."

International Committee To Review MAX

RUSS NILES

The Wall Street Journal is reporting (subscription) that the safety certification of the Boeing 737 MAX will be reviewed by an international committee, a large group of representatives from most of the major aviation regulators in the world. The panel, which is led by former NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart and includes delegates from Canada, China, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, the European Union and Brazil, will also do a detailed examination of the software fix proposed by Boeing and the FAA to address issues with the MCAS automatic stall prevention system that is implicated in two fatal crashes. The group’s first meeting is planned for later this month. The international involvement is unprecedented. Normally, the FAA would have sole control over the process and the resulting certification would be accepted by other jurisdictions under bilateral agreements between the U.S. and those entities. The Journal says the FAA hasn’t given the other agencies veto power but agreed with Boeing that the process needs buy-in from all of them if public confidence is to be restored in Boeing and the FAA’s certification system. “We both invite and welcome scrutiny as a necessary element of continuous improvement,” an FAA spokesman said. “Our recent and planned outreach efforts are a demonstration of this commitment to enhance the safety of the flying public.” What’s not clear is whether the committee approach will speed up or slow down the return to service of the MAX. All of the regulatory agency reps will come with an army of tech experts who will do the analysis of the mountains of data that will be generated. The FAA and Boeing seem to have accepted the inevitability of consensus as part of the return to service and if they didn’t the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has reminded them. It has said it will end its grounding “only once there is complete reassurance that it is safe.”