Flight Safety Information - January 31, 2023 No. 022 In This Issue : Incident: Westjet B737 at Halifax on Jan 4th 2023, trailing edge flaps locked : Incident: Vietjet A333 near Hong Kong on Jan 30th 2023, loss of cabin pressure : Incident: Jetblue A320 at Santiago on Jan 29th 2023, engine overheat on departure : Incident: India Express B738 at Kochi on Jan 29th 2023, hydraulic failure : Incident: British Airways A320 near Manchester on Jan 27th 2023, fumes in cockpit : Why Are Laser Attacks So Dangerous For Pilots? : When This Pilot Quit Her Job, Her Employer Billed Her $20,000 : FAA promises changes to prevent repeat of air travel safety system collapse : Parents leave ticketless baby at airport check-in as they rush to board flight : Drunk woman strips on Vistara flight, punches crew : 2 European Airlines Went Bust Over The Weekend : Boeing plans to add a new 737 Max production line to meet strong demand : Analysis: Airbus and Boeing try to fill giant factories with small jets : RESEARCH SURVEY Incident: Westjet B737 at Halifax on Jan 4th 2023, trailing edge flaps locked A Westjet Boeing 737-700, registration C-FWSV performing flight WS-8975 from Halifax,NS to Toronto,ON (Canada), declared PAN PAN at some stage into the flight due to flaps indication that required a flaps up landing. The crew used the alternate flaps system to extend the leading edge devices and landed safely on Toronto's runway 05 at a higher than normal speed. The Canadian TSB reported that the aircraft had already returned to Halifax earlier that morning due to a similiar flaps indication. Maintenance determined a connector was dirty, the connector was cleaned and checked and the aircraft was returned to service. During the occurrence flight the crew received a flaps asymmetry indication at 10,000 feet climbing out of Halifax. The crew verified that the flaps had fully retracted and the aircraft was in a clean configuration, then decided to continue to destination. At the destination they used the alternate flaps system to extend the leading edge devices and performed a 0-degrees flap landing with no airspeed or structural limits being exceeded. Maintenance replaced the #5 skew sensor and connector and by that occasion discovered that the connector had short circuited. The flaps were subsequently tested serviceable. https://avherald.com/h?article=5047a9f4&opt=0 Incident: Vietjet A333 near Hong Kong on Jan 30th 2023, loss of cabin pressure A Vietjet Airbus A330-300, registration VN-A812 performing flight VJ-932 from Hanoi (Vietnam) to Tokyo Narita (Japan), was enroute at 10,700 meters (FL351) when the crew initiated an emergency descent to 3000 meters (9800 feet) reporting the loss of cabin pressure. The aircraft diverted to Hong Kong for a safe landing on runway 07R about one hour after leaving 10,700 meters. The aircraft remained on the ground for about 4 hours, then continued the journey and reached Tokyo with a delay of about 4:20 hours. https://avherald.com/h?article=5047695b&opt=0 Incident: Jetblue A320 at Santiago on Jan 29th 2023, engine overheat on departure A Jetblue Airbus A320-200, registration N705JB performing flight B6-236 from Santiago (Dominican Republic) to New York JFK,NY (USA), was climbing out of Santiago when the crew stopped the climb at 10,000 feet reporting the overheating of one of the engines (V2527). The aircraft diverted to Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) for a safe landing about 20 minutes after departure. A replacement A320-200 registration N566JB reached New York with a delay of 9.5 hours. The occurrence aircraft is still on the ground in Santo Domingo about 23 hours after landing. https://avherald.com/h?article=504766a1&opt=0 Incident: India Express B738 at Kochi on Jan 29th 2023, hydraulic failure An Air India Express Boeing 737-800, registration VT-AXX performing flight IX-412 from Sharjah (United Arab Emirates) to Kochi (India) with 193 passengers and 6 crew, was descending towards Kochi when the crew reported a hydraulic failure. The aircraft continued for a safe landing on runway 27 and was able to vacate the runway. The aircraft returned to service about 3 hours after landing. https://avherald.com/h?article=50476522&opt=0 Incident: British Airways A320 near Manchester on Jan 27th 2023, fumes in cockpit A British Airways Airbus A320-200, registration G-MIDS performing positioning flight BA-9275 from Glasgow,SC to London Heathrow,EN (UK) with 2 crew on board, was enroute at FL350 about 70nm northnorthwest of Manchester,EN (UK) when the crew donned their oxygen masks, reported fumes in the cockpit and decided to divert to Manchester, where the aircraft landed on runway 05L about 30 minutes later. The airline confirmed the aircraft was on a positioning flight with 2 crew only, the crew requested priority and diverted to Manchester due to some minor technical issue. https://avherald.com/h?article=5045874d&opt=0 Why Are Laser Attacks So Dangerous For Pilots? An explanation of the severity of laser encounters. The sun set long ago. The pilots have dimmed the flight deck lights and are descending on the approach to their destination. The mood is calm and focused. Out of nowhere, everything disappears from view as a harsh fluorescence illuminates the flight deck. Thankfully, the autopilot is engaged, and the plane continues on its managed descent plan while the pilots struggle to regain their vision and focus. However, it only took a moment to disorient the pilots and severely erode the safety of the flight. This is the danger of laser attacks. The danger of lasers Pointing a laser at an aircraft in flight is unwise, illegal, and dangerous. A fair amount of the danger is inherent to the low altitude an aircraft is flying at for a laser strike to be viable. Planes are either on their initial climb out or, more commonly, descending toward an airport. It's easier to strike an aircraft with a laser while it's approaching an airport because of its relatively slow airspeed and limited vertical speed. At the same time, approach and landing are the most work-intensive parts of flying for pilots and the most dangerous time to be disrupted. It's difficult to fathom how jarring a laser strike is on a flight deck unless you experience it personally. I have yet to experience a laser strike while flying as an airline pilot, but I was subject to a few while working as an instructor. On both occasions, a student in the backseat spotted the laser beam attempting to strike the aircraft before I saw anything. Thankfully, we could all look away from the direct laser beam before it illuminated the interior. Still, there is no escaping the blinding light once the assailant lands a direct hit. We turned all our exterior lights off (something I learned during flight instructor training), and we instantly became invisible against the dark sky we were flying through. Night vision Pilots take great care to protect our night vision. We continue dimming the lights as the sun sets, and our vision shifts from daytime viewing to night vision. We avoid using white light and instead employ red lights for illumination. We also shift our iPads from a daytime viewing setting to a nighttime scene, eliminating color and brightness. We do this to accommodate the rods taking authority over the cones in our vision, and this helps us spot other traffic in the air, features on the ground, and view the instruments in front of us. After taking such care to dim our environment on the flight deck to the lowest needed light setting, the sudden illumination of a laser turns the flight deck into a blinding aurora. Want answers to more critical questions in aviation? Check out the rest of our guides here. Pilots have been forced to declare emergencies after suffering laser strikes. Not only is situational awareness wholly lost, but looking directly into a laser beam can cause an afterimage blindness that lasts for minutes. According to a Federal Aviation Administration study conducted from 2016 to 2021, laser encounters are on the rise. The penalties, if caught, include fines and potential jail time for repeated offenses, though it is challenging to find perpetrators. For a myriad of reasons, laser strikes are dangerous and jarring. Pilots do not anticipate such sudden changes in their flying environment. Aside from mechanical failures, laser strikes are near the top of the list of dangerous scenarios for flight crews. https://simpleflying.com/laser-attack-pilot-danger-guide/ When This Pilot Quit Her Job, Her Employer Billed Her $20,000 Struggling to find a good job, Kate Fredericks signed a “training repayment” agreement with her new airline. She soon came to regret it. Kate Fredericks, a pilot and former employee of cargo airline Ameriflight, is suing the company in a proposed class action lawsuit over the contract that Ameriflight made her sign. Kate Fredericks quit her job flying for the cargo airline Ameriflight in late November 2021, six and a half months into her stint as a pilot based out of Puerto Rico. It was the most expensive resignation she could imagine. Ameriflight told Fredericks she owed the company $20,000 for the cost of her training since she was leaving before working for 18 months. Fredericks had signed an agreement to those terms when she was hired, so she wasn’t surprised the company expected her to pay up. She had heard stories of other erstwhile Ameriflight pilots getting calls from debt collectors. Fearing the bill could wreck her good credit, she negotiated a payment plan directly with the company: $250 a month for nearly seven years. She started mailing the company a handwritten check each month because she was told they couldn’t accept electronic payments. “I was terrified. I didn’t want someone banging on my door,” said Fredericks, who’s 37 and lives in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts. “Some tried to ignore it and had collections scare the living daylights out of them.” Fredericks is now challenging the legality of that contract. She filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in federal court in Puerto Rico on Monday, arguing that the agreement she had to sign with Ameriflight amounts to an unlawful constraint of trade, trapping workers in their jobs to stifle competition and keep wages down. Her Ameriflight debt is a high-priced example of what critics call “training repayment agreement provisions,” or TRAPs. These agreements require workers to compensate their former employers for the purported costs of training if they leave before working a certain amount of time. In a recent case that gained national attention, a PetSmart dog groomer was hit with a $5,000 bill for the retailer’s “grooming academy” when she quit her job after seven months. The clauses have drawn the attention of the Federal Trade Commission because of the way they tie workers to their jobs and put a lid on pay. The agency recently issued a sweeping proposal to ban noncompete agreements, explicitly including training-repayment provisions in the plan. Employer groups are likely to sue the FTC in an effort to stop it. But the FTC does not have jurisdiction over air carriers when it comes to addressing alleged “unfair or deceptive practices” — that responsibility falls to the U.S. Transportation Department. On Monday, several advocacy groups sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg asking that he follow the FTC’s lead and stop the use of training-repayment provisions in the airline industry. The groups alleged that at least six other aviation firms have used the clauses. According to Fredericks’ lawsuit, an Ameriflight pilot could owe up to $30,000 depending on the training they received. In Fredericks’ case, her $20,000 tab would have been knocked down to $10,000 if she worked a full year after her training period. After 18 months, she wouldn’t have owed anything. Her complaint alleges Ameriflight withdrew the debt repayment agreement from new contracts last spring but continues to enforce it on pilots who signed it previously. An Ameriflight spokesperson declined to answer questions about Fredericks’ lawsuit or the training repayment agreements, saying the company doesn’t comment on litigation. Ameriflight, which is based in Dallas, serves as a “feeder” airline contracted by overnight carriers like UPS and DHL. HuffPost readers: Did you have to sign a training repayment agreement for your job? Email our reporter about it. You can remain anonymous. Fredericks filed her lawsuit with the help of Towards Justice, a legal aid group assisting workers, and the Student Borrower Protection Center, a nonprofit watchdog of the student loan industry. Attorney Mike Pierce, the center’s director, said Ameriflight’s repayment agreement is another illustration of employers trying to foist the cost of workforce training onto workers. He compared it to the exploitative practices used by many for-profit colleges. “What we saw in this case was the same fact pattern as when someone walks in the door of a fly-by-night helicopter or flight training academy,” Pierce said. “Instead of recruiting vulnerable people off the street and selling a bill of goods, they’re hiring people to become the next generation of pilots and using that position to take advantage of them.” But Fredericks’ battle with Ameriflight is also a story about the tumultuous pandemic labor market ― how it threw millions of desperate workers out of their jobs, then later handed them newfound leverage once the economy rebounded. The daughter of a pilot, Fredericks started flying planes in early 2018. She said it took her a year and a half and around $80,000 to obtain her private pilot license, instrument ratings and other credentials she’d need to find work. She financed the training with equity from a home sale and by working at a restaurant while she learned to fly. Her first job was flying scenic tours in Bar Harbor, Maine; her next was flying aerial surveys in parallel lines. But a promising new job she took with Republic Airlines fell through once the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020, as pilots and flight crews across the industry were laid off, furloughed or nudged into retirement. A friend from her old surveying job told Fredericks there was still a lot of work in Puerto Rico. So she went to the island and literally walked around the airport handing out copies of her resume, she recalled. She worked for a small commercial carrier before Ameriflight called with an offer in the spring of 2021. She understood she might be locking herself into Ameriflight for around two years. But the industry still hadn’t recovered, and stable work remained hard to find. “There’s this pressure put on pilots. ... You’ve just dedicated two years of your life to nothing but flying,” said Fredericks. “I had done all of these things and completely restructured my life.” Fredericks said her training period, during which she was paid $12.50 per hour, lasted around two months and took place in Puerto Rico and Dallas. That stint included the “Part 135” training that the Federal Aviation Administration requires for Ameriflight to operate its small cargo planes. Portions of the training were specific to the Beechcraft 99 planes that Fredericks would be flying. She said much of her in-the-air training with Ameriflight pilots was on flights in which the company was carrying cargo and making money. An important question in Fredericks’ case is what her training was really worth and how well it would transfer to other carriers. Her lawsuit calls $20,000 a “gross overvaluation.” Fredericks said she gained little marketability for her Beechcraft 99 training (the model’s production ended in the mid-1980s). She said she came to Ameriflight with 1,700 hours of flying time, well above the 1,200 hours Ameriflight required for incoming captains. “The training I received is a requirement by the FAA in order for them to operate as an airline in the U.S.,” Fredericks said. “You can’t just not do this training. If they didn’t give me this training, I couldn’t fly and they couldn’t operate.” Fredericks said her base salary at Ameriflight was around $55,000 per year. As the travel industry rebounded in 2021, her pay and schedule started to look less attractive compared to other opportunities. The same companies that had executed mass layoffs at the start of the pandemic were now competing with one another for a limited pool of workers. “Now the airlines were like, ’Oh no, we need pilots, pronto,’” Fredericks recalled. “It was basic capitalism, supply and demand. It was an immediate flip. I watched it happening and said, ‘I’m going to miss the boat if I don’t do something about this.’ Compared to where the market was, I was underpaid, overqualified, and had a grueling schedule that didn’t give me any time to see my family.” She left Ameriflight for another job at the end of November 2021. She and company officials were soon discussing her debt over email. Fredericks said she asked the company’s chief pilot for an itemized accounting of training costs but didn’t receive one. It’s not clear exactly when Ameriflight instituted the training repayment provision. Fredericks said she believes the company stopped using it last year because the tight job market would no longer allow it. (In August the company announced significant pay hikes for its pilots, setting a new base salary of $76,500 for captains.) “When someone is offered a no-strings-attached job to fly jets in the normal hours of the day, or offered to be paid less and sign a TRAP and fly in the middle of the night ― which one would you choose?” she said. Ameriflight’s repayment agreement was the subject of heated online debate in at least one forum for pilots early in the pandemic. At the time, a poster who said they worked for Ameriflight defended the use of the clause. The job market had been flooded with lots of capable pilots and the company needed to hire the ones who would stick around, they wrote. “Our training department spends a significant amount of time and Ameriflight spends a significant amount of money on each new hire,” the poster wrote. “With the substantial uptick in qualified applicants, narrowing the pool down to candidates who agree to commit to Ameriflight for at least 18 months is the responsible thing to do.” If Fredericks’ lawsuit succeeds, it’s possible her debt and that of other former Ameriflight pilots would be wiped out. They could also be entitled to damages. As part of the lawsuit, she is seeking an injunction that would forbid Ameriflight or its debt collectors from trying to enforce the clause. Fredericks still has several years left under her debt repayment plan. She said she hesitated to file a lawsuit out of fear she could damage her job prospects and even be blackballed from airlines as a “problem child.” But she wants to put an end to the practice. “People need to be free to make their own choices and not feel like they have a debt they’re carrying around like Atlas with the world on their shoulders,” Fredericks said. “No one should feel like they don’t have any options.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ameriflight-pilot-training-repayment-provisions_n_63a2214ee4b04414304bc464 FAA promises changes to prevent repeat of air travel safety system collapse The Federal Aviation Administration plans to dramatically accelerate replacing the safety system whose failure led to a nationwide air travel grounding earlier this month. The regulator also said it has taken steps to prevent a repeat of the meltdown in the interim. The FAA outlined the new timeframe and procedures in a letter to Congress Monday. The 30-year-old NOTAM, or Notice to Air Missions, system provides potential flight hazard information to pilots and air traffic controllers. Under previous plans the FAA would have taken at least six years to replace it. But now the system will be replaced by "mid-2025," the FAA said in the letter. FAAFAA is years away from upgrading the system that grounded all US flights The FAA said it now requires "at least two individuals to be present during the maintenance" of the NOTAM system. One of the individuals must be a FAA manager, the letter says. CNN first reported the failure was due to a corrupt file in the system. The FAA later confirmed that problem. It said a contract employee unintentionally deleted a file from the database. In the future, changes to the NOTAM system will not be immediately synchronized to the backup system, which "will prevent data errors from immediately reaching that backup database," the letter said. CNN previously reported the issue was discovered on both the main system and a backup system, complicating the recovery. "Contractor personnel directly involved in the deletion no longer have access to FAA buildings and systems while we complete our investigation," the agency wrote. The agency reiterated that the ongoing investigation has found "no evidence of a cyber-attack." FAA system outageWhat is NOTAM, the FAA computer system that halted all US flights? The NOTAM system is separate from the air traffic control system that keeps planes a safe distance from each other. Still, it's another critical tool for air safety. Its messages could include information about a runway lighting outage, nearby construction or unusual flight activity for an air show. "It's like telling a trucker that a road is closed up ahead. It's critical information," said Mike Boyd, aviation consultant at Boyd Group International. But the NOTAM system has problems beyond those that caused the failure. The system's notices are not as efficient and useful as they should be, according to Kathleen Bangs, a former airline pilot and aviation expert. "It's a clumsy system that often over-burdens pilots with pages and pages of less-than-urgent notices, written in archaic code that sometimes buries that one, critical piece of safety information a pilot really needs." The incident on Jan. 11 caused more than 9,500 flight delays and 1,300 cancellations, according to data from the tracking service FlightAware. It was the first nationwide grounding of the nation's air traffic system in 20 years, since the days following the Sept. 11 attacks. https://www.kcra.com/article/faa-changes-air-travel-safety-system-collapse/42712518 Parents leave ticketless baby at airport check-in as they rush to board flight Couple traveling from Ben Gurion to Brussels had not purchased a seat for infant; airport staff intercept them, send them back to get child A couple who did not purchase a ticket for their baby boy left the infant at the check-in counter in Ben Gurion Airport and tried to board a plane out of the country, the Israel Airports Authority said Tuesday. The parents, who both hold Belgian passports, had planned to take the baby with them on a Ryanair flight to Brussels but arrived late, after the check-in counters had closed. The couple then sprinted off toward security, leaving the infant behind in a baby carrier. Airport staff intercepted the couple and ordered them to go back and get the baby, while alerting police and airport security. The parents were taken in for questioning by police, along with the baby, Channel 12 reported. Ryanair staff at the airport said in a statement: “All the workers were in shock. We have never seen anything like that. We didn’t believe what we were seeing,” Channel 12 reported. It was not clear if the couple and baby eventually made the flight. https://www.timesofisrael.com/parents-leave-ticketless-baby-at-airport-check-in-as-they-rush-to-board-flight/ Drunk woman strips on Vistara flight, punches crew A 45-year-old Italian woman passenger allegedly punched a crew member, spat on another staffer and stripped on board a Vistara flight to Mumbai from Abu Dhabi after she was stopped from entering the business class, police said on Tuesday. The incident took place on Monday and after the flight landed in Mumbai, the crew members handed her over to Sahar police and she was arrested, they said. Vistara in a statement said the passenger was restrained by the crew for "unruly and violent behaviour" and the incident was reported to the relevant authorities as per the standard operating procedures. According to an official from Sahar police station, the woman, identified as Paola Perruccio, boarded the flight at around 2 am on Monday with an economy class ticket. The woman later entered the business class and when she was stopped by the crew members, she allegedly started abusing them, he said. When the crew members tried to stop the woman from misbehaving, she allegedly punched one of them in the face and spat on another staffer, the official said. When the other crew members rushed to help their colleagues, the woman allegedly started stripping and walked up and down the aisle in that state, he said. After the flight arrived here on Monday morning, the crew members approached the Sahar police and handed her over to them, the official said. The woman was arrested and booked under various Indian Penal Code Sections including 323 (voluntary causing hurt) and 337 (causing hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others) and provisions of the Aircraft Act, the official said. She was produced before a court and later released on bail, the police added. Vistara in a statement said, "We confirm that there was an unruly passenger on Vistara flight UK-256 operating from Abu Dhabi to Mumbai on January 30. In view of the continued unruly conduct and violent behaviour, the captain issued a warning card and made a decision to restrain the customer." The incident was reported to the relevant authorities as per the standard operating procedures, while the security agencies on-ground were informed to take immediate action upon arrival, the full service carrier said. The pilot made regular announcements to assure the other passengers onboard of their safety and security, it said. https://www.rediff.com/news/report/drunk-flyer-punches-crew-strips-on-vistara-flight-arrested/20230131.htm 2 European Airlines Went Bust Over The Weekend european airline bankruptcy Once Europe's largest regional airline, Flybe may be dead for good this time. Not one but two European airline startups that launched or relaunched during the Covid-19 pandemic are facing financial collapse, both announced within the span of a weekend. On Saturday, regional United Kingdom airline Flybe announced that it “has now ceased trading and all flights from and to the UK operated by Flybe have been cancelled and will not be rescheduled.” Once the largest independent regional airline in Europe, operating more than half of UK domestic flights outside London, had previously collapsed in 2020. The company was rescued the next year by Thyme Opco, a firm linked to US hedge fund Cyrus Capital, and relaunched last spring. It is in bankruptcy only eight months later. “Please note that Flybe is unfortunately not able to arrange alternative flights for passengers,” the airline’s website says. The Civil Aviation Authority is advising consumers booked on Flybe flights on how to recoup their money. On Monday, Norwegian startup Flyr announced that its inability to raise the cash it needs had led to a “critical short-term liquidity situation.” The media release said the airline was exploring “whether there are feasible alternatives to secure continued operations” but warned that there was “no guarantee that a solution that would create a meaningful shareholder value for the current shareholders will be found.” The airline launched its first domestic flights in June 2021 and expanded with international flights two months later. The airline’s already-battered share price fell 50% to a low of 0.0030 euros ($0.003). While the early days of the pandemic brought air travel to a halt, the crisis also changed the landscape of aviation with the launches of a bumper crop of small, regional, low-cost airlines around the world. North America now has a quartet of new budget airlines: Breeze Airways and Avelo Airlines in the US, and Jetlines and Lynx in Canada. Another startup, Aha! Airlines, launched in October 2021 but called it quits last August. Latin America welcomed Colombia’s Ultra Air, Ecuador’s Equair, and the Dominican Republic’s Arajet. Travelers in Asia can now fly VietTravel in Vietnam and Akasa Air in India. Lift, Green Africa, and Ibom Air are new airlines in Africa. Two pandemic-launched airlines — Iceland’s Play Airlines and Norway’s Norse Atlantic Airways — offer low-cost flights between Europe and the United States. Notably, the bottom is not falling out on low-cost regional carriers across the board, particularly those that are well established. Ireland-based Ryanair, Europe’s largest budget airline, on Monday posted a record $229-million profit for the last three months of 2022 and crowed about robust demand for spring and summer 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2023/01/30/2-european-airlines-went-bust/?sh=44d2659d7ef8 Boeing plans to add a new 737 Max production line to meet strong demand Boeing said it plans to add a fourth 737 Max production line in the second half of next year as it targets higher output of its best-selling plane, an executive told staff on Monday. The new line will be housed in Boeing’s massive Everett, Washington, factory, where it has been reworking some of its 787 Dreamliners and producing 777s and 767s. Until December, it had also been producing the 747 jumbo jet there. “This undertaking is significant,” Stan Deal, CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in a note to staff, which was seen by CNBC. “In addition to preparing the facility, we have begun the process of notifying and preparing our suppliers, customers, unions and employees as we take the necessary steps to create a new line.” Boeing has been eager to increase production of the 737 Max, but CEO Dave Calhoun has said the company is hesitant to ramp up output too quickly because of labor and supply chain strains. It is currently producing around 31 of the jets a month and last week said it is aiming for a rate of 50 a month in the “2025/2026 timeframe.” The manufacturer plans to hire around 10,000 workers this year, it said in a filing on Friday. It has a backlog of more than 3,600 of those single-aisle planes, with carriers including United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Southwest Airlines awaiting planes. Boeing booked 700 orders for new 737 Max planes last year. Boeing still plans to operate three production lines at the Renton, Washington, 737 Max factory, Deal said. He pointed to demand for newer models like the 737-10, the largest in the family, which still hasn’t won regulatory approval. Boeing plans to hand over the last 747 it has produced to cargo carrier Atlas Air on Tuesday afternoon. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/30/boeing-new-737-max-production-line.html Analysis: Airbus and Boeing try to fill giant factories with small jets PARIS, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Airbus (AIR.PA) and Boeing (BA.N) have set the stage for the next chapter in their titanic rivalry by remodelling two of the world's largest buildings - gutted by changes in air travel. As the last Boeing 747 leaves its factory later on Tuesday, part of the company's historic wide-body plant has been earmarked for production of in-demand smaller jets, matching a change of focus at the home of the defunct Airbus A380. The moves ease doubts over the future of Boeing's under-used Everett plant north of Seattle, the world's largest building by volume, and the empty Jean-Luc Lagardere A380 assembly hall in Toulouse, the world's second largest by usable space. Everett's industrial activity has also been sharply reduced by a decision to move 787 output to a single base in South Carolina due to a decline in demand for large planes. The smaller 737 will slot into a bay currently used for some remaining 787 work. Boeing said on Monday it would add a new 737 MAX production line in Everett in mid-2024, complementing three already in place at the Renton plant, 36 miles to the south. That comes as Airbus is mid-way through installing a new production line for its hot-selling A321neo narrow-body jet in the deserted Lagardere building. It has also announced plans to expand a plant in Alabama. Once exclusively serving as fortresses in an economic war over big twin-aisle jets, the colossal plants will become an industrial beehive for profitable single-aisle models, reflecting a surge of demand for short and medium trips. Analysts said Boeing's move signalled confidence in demand including from China, despite recent trade tensions. But they noted both sites will still have spare capacity as future production strategy and automation move centre-stage in the jet market duopoly, ahead of new orders or jet designs. "At this stage in the industry evolution, with no new programme starts in the near future, production strategy is coming to the fore," said aerospace consultant Jerrold Lundquist, managing director of The Lundquist Group. 'STATEMENT' TO AIRBUS AND INVESTORS Airbus and Boeing were for years evenly matched in the single-aisle market which generates most cash. But Airbus pulled sharply ahead due to strong sales of the A321neo and a safety crisis over the 737 MAX, from which Boeing is just recovering. Boeing aims initially to boost monthly single-aisle output to 50 from 30, and Airbus wants to go as high as 75 from about 45, though analysts question how quickly this can be done. But narrowing the gap is crucial to preserving Boeing's main cash cow and strengthening the platform for future launches. "(Boeing) don't want to be in a situation where Airbus moves to 70 and they are stuck at 50. They want to have the possibility of matching what Airbus does," said economist Adam Pilarski, senior vice-president at consultancy AVITAS. "So this is a very important statement (to Airbus): 'We are not going to withdraw from the market'," he added. Boeing declined to elaborate on Monday's announcement. Airbus declined to comment. Boeing's move is also seen as a bid to reinforce its appeal to investors, some of whom have voiced fears that it is drifting after Chief Executive Dave Calhoun ruled out launching a new plane within the next decade - even though many analysts agree it makes financial and technological sense to wait. "This is Calhoun's way of signalling: don't count us out, we're in this for the long haul," Lundquist said. Boeing has not said how the line would be designed but both companies are expected to seize on the chance to test the latest automation in part of the market where unit costs are critical. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airbus-boeing-try-fill-giant-factories-with-small-jets-2023-01-31/ RESEARCH SURVEY Greetings, My name is Nurettin Dinler, Research Scholar and PhD student at Department of Aviation Science, Saint Louis University working with Nithil Bollock Kumar, PhD Candidate, Gajapriya Tamilselvan, PhD, and Stephen Belt, PhD. We are working on a research project titled “Low-Cost Airline Pilots on Exercising Fuel-Loading Policies during Flight: A Phenomenological Exploration Study.” I am writing this e-mail to invite you to participate in a research study that we are conducting at Saint Louis University. Your participation in this study will involve taking a semi-structured interview that lasts for about 30 minutes. During the interview, you will be questioned about your experiences with Low-Cost Airlines’ fuel-loading policies developed to minimize pilot discretionary (extra) fuel. There is no compensation provided for your participation in the study. However, your participation will be a valuable addition to our research and your findings could lead to greater understanding of risk management for pilots and the sources of stressors in commercial aviation. Participation is completely voluntary, and your participation will remain confidential throughout the process of research. If you are interested in participating in this research, please take a moment to complete the survey at the following link: https://slu.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0l9Awl5UkXDiKRo If you have any questions, please contact me at 321-245-8628 or nurettin.dinler@slu.edu Thank you for your time and consideration. Regards, Nurettin Dinler, M.S. Research Scholar Oliver L. Parks Department of Aviation Science School of Science and Engineering McDonnell Douglas Hall, Lab 1046 3450 Lindell Blvd., St Louis, MO 63103 nurettin.dinler@slu.edu (321) 245-8628 Curt Lewis