It said 128 jets should be suspended until inspections are carried out.

United Airlines and Japan’s two main operators have already stopped using 56 planes with the same engine.

Flight 328, carrying 231 passengers, was forced to make an emergency landing at Denver airport.

No-one was injured.

“While [an] investigation is ongoing, we recommended suspending operations of the 69 in-service and 59 in-storage 777 aircraft powered by Pratt & Whitney 4000-112 engines,” the company said in a statement.

Pratt & Whitney said it had dispatched a team to work with investigators.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), United is the only US airline flying this model of 777, with the others being in Japan and South Korea.

Korean Air, which has six planes in operation and 10 in storage, said it was awaiting instruction from South Korean regulators regarding any measures for its 777 jets.

United Flight 328, bound for Honolulu, suffered a failure in its right-hand engine.

Debris from the jet was found scattered over a nearby residential area after it returned to Denver airport.

The agency has ordered extra inspections of Boeing 777 jets fitted with the Pratt & Whitney 4000 engine following the incident.

“We reviewed all available safety data following [Saturday’s] incident,” said FAA administrator Steve Dickson in a statement.

“Based on the initial information, we concluded that the inspection interval should be stepped up for the hollow fan blades that are unique to this model of engine, used solely on Boeing 777 airplanes.”

The FAA met representatives from the engine firm and Boeing on Sunday evening.

The initial finding of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is that most of the damage occurred in the right engine, where two fan blades were fractured and other blades also impacted. The main body of the aeroplane suffered only minor damage.

The engine failure is the another blow for Boeing after its 737 Max aircraft was grounded for 18 months following two aviation accidents that left 346 people dead.

‘Shaking violently’

Passengers on board the Denver flight described a “large explosion” shortly after take-off.

“The plane started shaking violently, and we lost altitude and we started going down,” David Delucia said.

He added that he and his wife placed their wallets in their pockets so that “in case we did go down, we could be ID’d”.

Police in the town of Broomfield posted pictures of what appeared to be the front of an engine-casing in the front garden of a home.

Other fragments were seen around the town, including on a football field.

No-one was injured by the falling debris.

In Japan, all 777s with the Pratt & Whitney 4000 model engines are to avoid its airspace until further notice.

This includes take-offs, landings and flights over the country.

The government there has also ordered JAL and ANA airlines to suspend the use of its 777s with the same model engine.

Last December a JAL flight was forced to return to Naha Airport due to a malfunction in the left engine – the plane is the same age as the 26-year-old United Airlines plane from Saturday’s incident.

In 2018, the right engine of a United Airlines plane broke shortly before it landed in Honolulu.

Following an investigation, the NTSB said the incident was caused by a full-length fan blade fracture.

Source: BBC

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This the company said on Wednesday was as a result of the global grounding of 737 MAX airplanes.

Boeing said its quarterly revenue nosedived by 35 per cent to reach 15.8 billion dollars, compared to 24 billion dollars in the same period of 2018.

The company said its best-selling 737 MAX jets remained grounded globally since mid March 2019 over the two deadly crashes that killed 346 people in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

The company said the second-quarter revenue of 15.8 billion dollars and GAPP loss of 5.21 dollars per share reflected the previously announced 737 MAX charge.

The charge that cut revenue by 5.6 billion dollars and earnings by 8.74 dollars per share.

Boeing said in July that it would take 4.9 billion dollars in after tax charge to cover possible compensation to airlines that have canceled thousands of flights of the 737 MAX jets.

Two of which crashed in Indonesia in October and in Ethiopia, in March 2019.

Boeing said its Q2 revenue loss was partially helped by better operations earnings from its defence, space, security and service business.

This has increased 159 per cent to hit 975 million dollars, compared to 376 million dollars in the same period a year before.

The company’s defence sector generated 6.6 billion dollars in revenues for the quarter, up to 8 per cent from the figure of 6.1 billion dollars in 2018.

Meanwhile, Boeing’s commercial sector yielded only 4.7 billion dollars in revenue for the second quarter, falling sharply by 66 per cent from 13.95 billion dollars posted in the corresponding period of 2018.

Boeing delivered 90 commercial airplanes for the second quarter, down with 54 per cent compared to the figure of 194 in the same period of 2018.

It said the company had made no delivery of any 737 MAX planes for this quarter.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said on an earnings call on Wednesday that the company would consider cutting 737 MAX output to a level below the current rate of 42 aircraft per month.

He also added that temporarily it would suspend its production if the plane’s return to service was further delayed.

Boeing announced in April that the monthly production of 737 MAX was reduced from the rate of 52 to 42 airplanes after the second air crash in Ethiopia.

Boeing said that previous 2019 guidance did not reflect the impact of the 737 MAX groundings.

However, a new guidance will be issued at a future date due to the uncertainty of the timing and conditions surrounding return to service of the 737 MAX fleet.

The U.S. airplane maker said it was working closely with U.S. federal regulators on the process they had laid out to certify the 737 MAX software update.

“With a clear focus on our values, we are delivering for our customers, working to safely return the 737 MAX to service and capturing new opportunities,’’ Muilenburg tweeted on  Wednesday.

Source:  Xinhua/NAN

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Boeing plane crashes: CEO admits company installed faulty cockpit.

The chief executive officer of Boeing  said the United States-based aircraft maker had made a mistake in installing a faulty cockpit warning system on its 737 MAX planes, Reuters reported.

Dennis Muilenburg’s admission came after two fatal crashes over the last year.

In March, 157 people died when Ethiopian Airlines flight JT610 crashed minutes after takeoff.

In October last year, 189 people died when Lion Air’s flight ET302 crashed off the coast of Indonesia.

Both crashes involved the 737 MAX model.

In April, Boeing announced plans to cut back production of its 737 MAX aircraft after several countries grounded the aircraft following the crashes.

Muilenburg said on Sunday that Boeing failed to communicate “crisply” with regulators and customers, and admitted that it will take a long time for the plane maker to regain consumer confidence.

However, he defended the company’s broad engineering and design approach to the Boeing 737 MAX planes.

The chief executive said he expects the 737 MAX to return to service this year.

Muilenburg added that 90 per cent of the aircraft’s customers have taken part in simulator sessions with its upgraded MCAS software.

“Clearly, we can make improvements, and we understand that and we will make those improvements,” he said.

Muilenburg said the company is fully supporting the criminal investigation the US Department of Justice has initiated into the two crashes.

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The company has provided additional information to device operators, a spokesman of the company says.

The spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, said the changes will ensure that the simulator experience is representative across different flight conditions and will improve the simulation of force loads on the manual trim wheel that helps control the airplane.

Source:  Reuters

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The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) cited new satellite data and evidence from the scene of Sunday’s crash near Addis Ababa for its decision to join Europe, China and other nations in suspending 737 MAX flights.

The crash was the second disaster involving the 737 MAX, the world’s most-sold modern passenger aircraft, in less than five months.

The new information from the wreckage in Ethiopia and newly refined data about the plane’s flight path indicated some similarities between the two disasters “that warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause,” the FAA said in a statement.

The acting administrator of the FAA, Daniel Elwell, said he did not know how long the U.S. grounding of the aircraft would last.

A software fix for the 737 Max that Boeing has been working on since a fatal crash last October in Indonesia will take months to complete, Elwell told reporters.

The single-aisle 737 is central to Boeing’s future in its battle with European rival Airbus SE.

The new variant of the 737, the fastest-selling jetliner in Boeing’s history, is viewed as the likely workhorse for global airlines for decades.

“The agency made this decision as a result of the data gathering process and new evidence collected at the site and analyzed today,” the FAA said, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump announced the planes would be grounded.

It was the second time the FAA has halted flights of a Boeing plane in six years.

It grounded the 787 Dreamliner in 2013 because of problems with smoking batteries.

Boeing, which maintained that its planes were safe to fly, said in a statement that it supported the latest FAA move.

“Boeing has determined – out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety – to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.”

The crash involving a Boeing 737 MAX in Indonesia killed 189 people.

Passengers have been spooked by the two disasters. U.S. travel website Kayak was making changes to let customers exclude specific aircraft types from searches, and booking sites were looking to reroute passengers.

U.S. airlines that operate the 737 MAX, Southwest Airlines Co, American Airlines Group Inc and United Airlines, said they were working to re-book passengers.

Southwest had 5 MAX-related cancellations on Wednesday and American nearly 40.

Southwest is the world’s largest operator of the 737 MAX 8 with 34 jets.

France’s air accident investigation agency BEA will analyze black-box cockpit voice and data recorders from the crashed plane, a spokesman said.

The French announcement resolved uncertainty over the fate of the two recorders after Germany’s BFU said it had declined a request to handle them because it could not process the new type of recorder used on the 737 MAX jets, in service since 2017.

Shares of the company ended up 0.5 per cent at $377.14, recovering from a more than 3 per cent fall in the afternoon when the FAA announcement was made.

The United States had held back on suspending 737 MAX flights on Tuesday even as many of the world’s top economies such as China and European nations grounded the plane.

Trump called Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg on Wednesday to inform him that the United States was preparing to ground the fleet, a White House official said.

“I spoke with a number of airlines. And speaking to the airlines, I think that we all agree that this was right decision to make. It didn’t have to be made, but we thought it was the right decision to make,” Trump told reporters.

The grounding was welcomed by air workers in the United States.

John Samuelsen, international president of the Transport Workers Union of America, which represents aviation workers and flight attendants, said the grounding of the fleet was right “both for air travelers and aviation workers.”

Canada also grounded 737 MAX jets on Wednesday, saying satellite data suggested similarities to the previous crash involving the same plane model in October.

U.S.-based aircraft-tracking firm Aireon provided the satellite data to the FAA, Transport Canada and several other authorities, company spokeswoman Jessie Hillenbrand said.

Ethiopian Airlines spokesman Asrat Begashaw said it was still unclear what happened on Sunday, but its pilot had reported control issues as opposed to external factors such as birds.

“The pilot reported flight control problems and requested to turn back. In fact he was allowed to turn back,” he said.

Brazil, Mexico and Panama on Wednesday became the first Latin American nations to suspend the Boeing 737 MAX.

Earlier, Panama’s Copa Airlines had suspended operations of its six Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft until the findings are published of an investigation into Sunday’s crash.

The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Democrat Peter DeFazio, called for a probe into why the 737 MAX received certification to fly.

Source:  Reuters

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