Latest Aviation News

The three main Chinese airlines, China Southern, China Eastern, and Air China, have sent a formal request to Boeing for compensation for the cost of grounding their 737 MAX and the postponements of deliveries. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) was the first to order the country’s airlines to suspend Boeing 737 MAX 8 commercial operations following Ethiopian Airlines crash. On March 13, 2019, three days after Ethiopian Airlines crash, Norwegian Air Shuttle was the first affected company to publicly consider compensation. Lasse Sandaker-Nielsen, a spokesperson for the low-cost carrier told  e24.no  that it would claim compensation from the plane manufacturer: "We will send the full bill to Boeing. Norwegian should not be penalized economically because a totally new plane cannot fly”.

After two disastrous plane crashes, new revelations in the Boeing 737 Max ‘fatal flaw’ scandal claim the aviation giant failed to disclose critical information about the aircraft’s warning system. Last week in a special 60 Minutes report, Liz Hayes revealed one of aviation history’s biggest scandals – that aircraft giant Boeing's brand-new 737 Max planes had a “fatal flaw” in a flight control system called MCAS; a system whose very existence Boeing failed to disclose to its airline customers and pilots.  MCAS malfunctions are being held responsible for two horror plane crashes that claimed the lives of 346 men, women and children. This week 60 Minutes reports more damning revelations about the aircraft manufacturer and warnings that should have been heeded about the 737 MAX, well before the crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March this year. A Lion AIr Boeing 737 MAX jet plunged into the sea off Indonesia last year. (Supplie...

Boeing Co did not tell US regulators that it inadvertently made an alarm alerting pilots to a mismatch of flight data on the 737 MAX. Boeing Co did not tell US regulators for more than a year that it inadvertently made an alarm alerting pilots to a mismatch of flight data optional on the 737 MAX, instead of standard as on earlier 737s, but insisted on Sunday the missing display represented no safety risk. The US planemaker has been trying for weeks to dispel suggestions that it made airlines pay for safety features after it emerged that an alert designed to show discrepancies in Angle of Attack readings from two sensors was optional on the 737 MAX. Erroneous data from a sensor responsible for measuring the angle at which the wing slices through the air – known as the Angle of Attack – is suspected of triggering a flawed piece of software that pushed the plane downward in two recent crashes. In a statement, Boeing said it only discovered once deliveries of the 737 MAX had beg...

The Chief Executive Officer of  Boeing Co , Dennis Muilenburg, has partially blamed the pilots flying the  Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max  that crashed in March 2019. His statement contradicts the preliminary findings published in April. Muilenburg said the pilot did not completely follow the manufacturer’s emergency procedures, defending the plane’s design and software system which he said met  Boeing ‘s safety criteria. The blame game took a new turn during  Muilenburg’s address to shareholders at the company’s annual meeting  in Chicago on Monday. The Ethiopian Airlines investigators had absolved the Pilots of wrongdoings before and during the emergency landing that caused the crash. The Investigators  recommended that  Boeing  should review its software  MCAS .  The report did not fault the American manufacturer because the global aviation guideline is to recommend rather than blame any party that might have cause...

Boeing did not tell Southwest, its largest 737 Max customer, that a safety feature was turned off. The safety feature is an alert that lights up in the cockpit if a plane's angle-of-attack sensors transmit faulty data about the pitch of the plane's nose. Southwest did not know about the change until after the fatal Lion Air crash. The FAA even considered grounding Southwest's Max fleet while they weighed whether or not the airline's pilots needed additional training about the safety alert, according to The Wall Street Journal. Boeing  did not tell  Southwest Airlines , its largest 737 Max customer, that a standard safety feature designed to warn pilots about malfunctioning sensors had been deactivated on the jets. The safety feature is an alert that lights up in the cockpit if a plane's angle-of-attack sensors transmit faulty data about the pitch of the plane's nose. This feature is known as an angle-of-attack disagree light and was inclu...

Airlines are holding off on orders for Boeing's 737 Max — the latest sign of how deeply the company's best-selling jet has been thrown into crisis. Boeing ( BA ) released data Tuesday that showed only 10 of the planes were ordered in the first two months of 2019. There were no orders in March, the month that a 737 Max jet flown by Ethiopian Airlines pilots crashed in that country, killing everyone aboard. It was the second fatal crash involving a Max in recent months. That small number compares to 112 orders for the plane in the first quarter of 2018. At that time, Southwest Airlines ( LUV ) had ordered 40 of the jets, while Ryanair ordered 25. Orders for Boeing's other commercial jets actually increased slightly. The company sold 85 other commercial jets last quarter, compared to 68 a year earlier. But the sales data for the Max gives the clearest picture yet of how much scrutiny of that model could be hurting Boeing's bottom line. Investigators are ...

The Bloomberg news portal is reporting that Ethiopian Airlines is reconsidering its orders for Boeing 737  MAX jets following the release of a preliminary report into the ET302 crash. “We may reach the decision: Look, we just had a very tragic accident a few weeks ago, and customers still have the accident in their mind. So it will be a hard sell for us to convince our customers,” Tewolde GebreMariam is quoted to have said. Ethiopian had earlier ordered 30 of the now controversial jets with five delivered at the time of the crash. The airline will not take delivery of the remaining 25 anytime soon – or perhaps at all, Tewolde said. According to him, the decision on the 737 Max purchases will come after Boeing offers a software fix to a system implicated in the crash – and an earlier Lion Air crash. They will also base their decision based on what regulators and other airlines do. “Our situation is quite different from the others, because we are the victim. You can imagine ...

- As we work closely with customers and global regulators to return the 737 MAX to service, we continue to be driven by our enduring values, with a focus on safety, integrity and quality in all we do.  We now know that the recent Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 accidents were caused by a chain of events, with a common chain link being erroneous activation of the aircraft's MCAS function. We have the responsibility to eliminate this risk, and we know how to do it. As part of this effort, we're making progress on the 737 MAX software update that will prevent accidents like these from ever happening again. Teams are working tirelessly, advancing and testing the software, conducting non-advocate reviews, and engaging regulators and customers worldwide as we proceed to final certification. I recently had the opportunity to experience the software update performing safely in action during a 737 MAX 7 demo flight.  We're also finalizing new pilot training ...

Overview The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) flight control law was designed and certified for the 737 MAX to enhance the pitch stability of the airplane – so that it feels and flies like other 737s. MCAS is designed to activate in manual flight, with the airplane’s flaps up, at an elevated Angle of Attack (AOA). Boeing has developed an MCAS software update to provide additional layers of protection if the AOA sensors provide erroneous data. The software was put through hundreds of hours of analysis, laboratory testing, verification in a simulator and two test flights, including an in-flight certification test with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) representatives on board as observers. The additional layers of protection include: Flight control system will now compare inputs from both AOA sensors. If the sensors disagree by 5.5 degrees or more with the flaps retracted, MCAS will not activate. An indicator on the flight deck display wi...