In the brutally competitive jetliner business ...

[Michael Grove]

... the announcement in late 2010 that Airbus would introduce a more fuel-efficient version of its best-selling A320 amounted to a frontal assault on its archrival Boeing’s workhorse 737.

Boeing scrambled to counterpunch. Within months, it came up with a plan for an upgrade of its own, the 737 Max, featuring engines that would yield similar fuel savings. And in the years that followed, Boeing pushed not just to design and build the new plane, but to persuade its airline customers and, crucially, the Federal Aviation Administration, that the new model would fly safely and handle enough like the existing model that 737 pilots would not have to undergo costly retraining.

Boeing’s strategy set off a cascading series of engineering, business and regulatory decisions that years later would leave the company facing difficult questions about the crash in October of a Lion Air 737 Max off Indonesia.  

The causes of the crash, which killed 189 people, are still under investigation. Indonesian authorities are studying the cockpit voice recorder for insights into how the pilots handled the emergency, and are examining Lion Air’s long history of maintenance problems.

But the tragedy has become a focus of intense interest and debate in aviation circles because of another factor: the determination by Boeing and the F.A.A. that pilots did not need to be informed about a change introduced to the 737’s flight control system for the Max, some software coding intended to automatically offset the risk that the size and location of the new engines could lead the aircraft to stall under certain conditions.

That judgment by Boeing and its regulator was at least in part a result of the company’s drive to minimize the costs of pilot retraining. And it appears to have left the Lion Air crew without a full understanding of how to address a malfunction that seems to have contributed to the crash: faulty data erroneously indicating that the plane was flying at a dangerous angle, leading the flight control system to repeatedly push the plane’s nose down.

James Glanz, Julie Creswell, Thomas Kaplan and Zach Wichter  - The New York Times

[Michael Grove]

http://letschangetheworld.ning.com/profiles/blogs/china-s-zero-tole...

[Michael Grove]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/03/19/boeing-chief-issues...

[Michael Grove]

WASHINGTON — A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 MAX jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.

The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 MAX 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.

The presentation reviewed by the Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.

For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the FAA conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/faa-audit-of-boeings-737-max-...

[Michael Grove]

A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 MAX jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.

The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 MAX 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.

The presentation reviewed by the Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.

For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the FAA conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.

The Seattle Times



https://www.seattletimes.com/business/faa-audit-of-boeings-737-max-...