Posts with the tag ‘Boeing’


Investigation Shows Early Deception by Boeing on 737 Max

July 2, 2020

Boeing’s campaign to underplay and withhold information about a software system linked to two deadly air disasters goes back to the earliest days of the airliner’s design, a new report from the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General says. The report released on Wednesday is one of several launched following two crashes of Boeing 737 Max airliners that killed a total of 346 people in late 2018 and March of 2019. After the second accident, Boeing’s brand new airliner was grounded globally and it hasn’t flown in commercial service since. It is a record-setting halt in operations for a new airliner, surpassing even the infamous British… Read More…


Will the 737 MAX Fly Again?

June 17, 2020

For those who like to gamble, the stakes are pretty high on one simple yes or no question, Will the Boeing 737 MAX fly again? I think it is unlikely, but on that, I am in the minority. Wednesday’s U.S. Senate hearing at which FAA administrator Stephen Dickson is scheduled to testify could provide some clues to the airplane’s future. (You can watch the hearing live here, beginning at 10:00 a.m. EST.) Over the past few weeks, I’ve reached out to industry insiders for their opinions. Few shared my gloomy view about the MAX. It seems that the sixties-era, twin-engine jetliner with the fancy new… Read More…


Boeing Workers Warn of 737 NG Structural Problems – Then 4 Planes Fracture

February 17, 2020

There’s something very worrisome about the wreckage photos of the Pegasus Airlines Boeing 737 that overran the runway at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen Airport on February 5th, killing three and injuring nearly everyone else on board. Check out the photos below and see the eerie similarity to the way the fuselages fractured in almost exactly the same way in three previous runway excursion events involving Boeing 737 NG aircraft. If you are wondering what this could mean about the model’s structural integrity and its ability to protect passengers in events like runway excursions, you are not alone. Concerns that substandard structural elements were installed on the… Read More…


A Decade in Aviation Departs Leaving Challenges in Its Wake

December 31, 2019

The request for an email interview arrived in my inbox from Namibia shortly after Christmas. The journalist wanted my thoughts about, what else, the Boeing 737 Max. The October 2018 and March 2019 crashes of two of Boeing’s newest jetliners and the subsequent grounding of the fleet for an unprecedented 9 months (and counting) is the aviation story of the decade. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, the ripples continue to radiate outward, making the Max debacle a story of global significance. Norway, Indonesia, Argentina, China, Mauritania, Iceland, Morocco, airlines in these and other nations have been impacted by decisions made at Boeing and… Read More…


Boeing Practiced in Hiding Information from Investigators

October 29, 2019

Boeing’s decision to keep from investigators text messages from 2016 in which a 737 Max test pilot, Mark Forkner, worried that there were egregious problems with the airplane’s flight control system prompted the Administrator of the Federal Aviation  Administration two weeks ago to demand answers from Boeing. In a letter to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, Steve Dickson wrote that he expected an immediate explanation. Likely, members of the Senate Commerce Committee will make a similar demand of Muilenburg when he testifies on Tuesday. To be clear, however, this is not the first time that Boeing purposefully withheld information that would have been useful to investigators…. Read More…


Lion Air Crash Report Urges Realistic View of Pilot Capabilities

October 25, 2019

The final report on the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 tells a lengthy but ultimately old story; many things combined to lead to the October 29, 2018 disaster that killed 189 people. The National Transportation Safety Committee details nine as it lists the shortcomings of Lion Air, Air Nav Indonesia and Boeing. Incorrect, flawed, erroneous, incomplete and ineffective are just some of the damning words that litter the list of contributing factors. But it is its recommendation to Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration that goes to the heart of the global debate that heated up with the twin Max disasters. What is the… Read More…


Irony of Pilot Laying Blame On Pilots in Boeing 737 Max Disasters

September 21, 2019

Full disclosure, I own and have read nearly every book ever written by William Langewiesche. He is a gifted writer with a stunning intellect and this is just an aside, he’s quite the looker. I have interviewed him twice but with his latest article in The New York Times Magazine, I think my crush is over. In a lengthy piece just published, Langewiesche weaves the known facts of the two 737 Max disasters into a jumble of opinion, pilot-bashing and Western superiority. Ostensibly, he is informing Times readers that not all pilots are Chuck Yeager and to justify the headline of the article, when it… Read More…


Terror at Takeoff; Boeing Remedy Did Not Work – Report Suggests

April 4, 2019

  The pilots of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 encountered troubles with their brand new Boeing 737 Max shortly after the jet’s wheels left the pavement in Addis Ababa, early in the morning of March 10th. The sensor registering the angle at which the airplane sliced through the sky sent erroneous information into the plane’s system and the stick shaker in front of captain Yared Getachew (seen left in photo above) “activated and remained active until near the end of the flight,” the Ethiopian investigators have determined. Reading through the 25-page preliminary report the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AIB) of Ethiopia released today, a cascade of… Read More…


Ethiopian Airlines Law Suit on Behalf of American to be Filed in the U.S.

April 3, 2019

The first civil lawsuit on behalf of an American victim of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 will be filed on Thursday in Federal Court in Chicago on behalf of a 24-year old health care worker and the niece of consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Samya Stumo, originally from Sheffield, Massachusetts, was on her way to Nairobi for work with ThinkWell Global when the Boeing 737 Max plunged into a field six minutes after takeoff. The accident, the second crash of Boeing’s newest jetliner forced the grounding of the entire fleet and tough scrutiny of the design and certification of the airplane. Robert Clifford, a… Read More…


NTSB Chairman Says He Might Have Done as Pilots in Fatal 737 Max Crashes Did

March 28, 2019

America’s top transportation safety official, and a former 737 captain told U.S. senators on Wednesday what he might have done if he was in the cockpit of one of the Boeing 737 Maxs that inexplicably and repeatedly went nose down before crashing in Indonesia and Ethiopia. National Transportation Safety Board Chairman, Robert Sumwalt replied to that hypothetical question saying, “Well, I flew the 737 for 10 years, and I do believe there is a procedure on the Flintstone version of the 737 I flew, a very old 737, but I do believe the first thing I would do is oppose that motion by pulling the… Read More…


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