January 10, 2024- No. 02

In This Issue 

: Workers at a Boeing Supplier Raised Issues About Defects. The Company Didn’t Listen.

: Alaska Airlines jet door plug fittings fractured, bolts possibly 'weren't there at all,' NTSB says

: FAA faces tough questions about Boeing oversight after 737 MAX emergency 

: Spirit AeroSystems statement on Alaska Airlines flight

: Boeing CEO’s comeback plan for 2024 takes a blow five days in 

: Boeing dismantles old aircraft to build NASA’s newest experimental plane 

: Diamond Factory Maintenance Mis-Rigged DA42 Rudder

: STC vs ASTM: What’s best for unleaded fuels?

: EcoPulse Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Makes First Flight Of Test Program

: Congressmen Call For Floating Flight Recorders

: The sky’s the limit: The changing face of in-flight entertainment 


 


Workers at a Boeing Supplier Raised Issues About Defects. The Company Didn’t Listen.
BY KATYA SCHWENK 
DAVID SIROTA LUCY DEAN STOCKTON JOEL WARNER

Weeks before the door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight over Portland, Oregon, on January 5, grounding more than 150 Boeing aircraft, workers at the part’s reported manufacturer had been warning of safety concerns — but management ignored them.

Less than a month before a catastrophic aircraft failure prompted the grounding of more than 150 of Boeing’s commercial aircraft, documents were filed in federal court alleging that former employees at the company’s subcontractor repeatedly warned corporate officials about safety problems and were told to falsify records.
One of the employees at Spirit AeroSystems, which reportedly manufactured the door plug that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight over Portland, Oregon, allegedly told company officials about an “excessive amount of defects,” according to the federal complaint and corresponding internal corporate documents reviewed by us. 
According to the court documents, the employee told a colleague that “he believed it was just a matter of time until a major defect escaped to a customer.”

The allegations come from a federal securities lawsuit accusing Spirit of deliberately covering up systematic quality-control problems, encouraging workers to undercount defects, and retaliating against those who raised safety concerns. Read the full complaint here.

Although the cause of the Boeing airplane’s failure is still unclear, some aviation experts say the allegations against Spirit are emblematic of how brand-name manufacturers’ practice of outsourcing aerospace construction has led to worrisome safety issues.

They argue that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has failed to properly regulate companies like Spirit, which was given a $75 million public subsidy from Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation Department in 2021, reported more than $5 billion in revenues in 2022, and bills itself as “one of the world’s largest manufacturers of aerostructures for commercial airplanes.”

“The FAA’s chronic, systemic, and longtime funding gap is a key problem in having the staffing, resources, and travel budgets to provide proper oversight,” said William McGee, a senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, who has served on a panel advising the US Transportation Department. “Ultimately, the FAA has failed to provide adequate policing of outsourced work, both at aircraft manufacturing facilities and at airline maintenance facilities.”
David Sidman, a spokesperson for Boeing, declined to comment on the allegations raised in the lawsuit. “We defer to Spirit for any comment,” he wrote in an email to us.

Spirit AeroSystems did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the federal lawsuit’s allegations. The company has not yet filed a response to the complaint in court.

“At Spirit AeroSystems, our primary focus is the quality and product integrity of the aircraft structures we deliver,” the company said in a written statement after the Alaska Airlines episode.

The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its oversight of Spirit.
“Business Depends Largely on Sales of Components for a Single Aircraft”
Spirit was established in 2005 as a spin-off company from Boeing. The publicly traded firm remains heavily reliant on Boeing, which has lobbied to delay federal safety mandates. According to Spirit’s own Securities and Exchange Commission filings, the company’s “business depends largely on sales of components for a single aircraft program, the B737,” the latest version of which — the 737 Max 9 — has now been temporarily grounded, pending inspections by operators.

Spirit and Boeing are closely intertwined. Spirit’s new CEO Patrick Shanahan was a Trump administration Pentagon official who previously worked at Boeing for more than thirty years, serving as the company’s vice president of various programs, including supply chain and operations, all while the company reported lobbying federal officials on airline safety issues. Spirit’s senior vice president Terry George, in charge of operations engineering, tooling, and facilities, also previously served as Boeing’s manager on the 737 program.

Last week’s high-altitude debacle — which forced an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9’s emergency landing in Portland — came just a few years after Spirit was named in FAA actions against Boeing. In 2019 and 2020, the agency alleged that Spirit delivered parts to Boeing that did not comply with safety standards, then “proposed that Boeing accept the parts as delivered” — and “Boeing subsequently presented [the parts] as ready for airworthiness certification” on hundreds of aircraft.

Then came the class-action lawsuit: In May 2023, a group of Spirit AeroSystems’ shareholders filed a complaint against the company, claiming it made misleading statements and withheld information about production troubles and quality-control issues before media reports of the problems led to a major drop in Spirit’s market value.

An amended version of the complaint, filed on December 19, provides more expansive charges against the company, citing detailed accounts by former employees alleging extensive quality-control problems at Spirit.
Company executives “concealed from investors that Spirit suffered from widespread and sustained quality failures,” the complaint alleges. “These failures included defects such as the routine presence of foreign object debris (‘FOD’) in Spirit products, missing fasteners, peeling paint, and poor skin quality. Such constant quality failures resulted in part from Spirit’s culture which prioritized production numbers and short-term financial outcomes over product quality, and Spirit’s related failure to hire sufficient personnel to deliver quality products at the rates demanded by Spirit and its customers including Boeing.”
“We Are Being Asked to Purposely Record Inaccurate Information”
The court documents allege that on Feruary 22, 2022, one Spirit inspection worker explicitly told company management that he was being instructed to misrepresent the number of defects he was working on.
“You are asking us to record in a inaccurately [sic] way the number of defects,” he wrote in an email to a company official. “This make [sic] us and put us in a very uncomfortable situation.”

The worker, who is unnamed in the federal court case, submitted an ethics complaint to the company detailing what had occurred, writing in it that the inspection team had “been put on [sic] a very unethical place,” and emphasizing the “excessive amount of defects” workers were encountering.
“We are being asked to purposely record inaccurate information,” the inspection worker wrote in the ethics complaint.

He then sent an email to Spirit’s then CEO, Tom Gentile, attaching the ethics complaint and detailing his concerns, saying it was his “last resort.”
When the employee had first expressed concerns to his supervisor about the mandate, the supervisor responded “that if he refused to do as he was told, [the supervisor] would fire him on the spot,” the court documents allege.
After the worker sent the first email, he was allegedly demoted from his position by management, and the rest of the inspection team was told to continue using the new system of logging defects.

Ultimately, the worker’s complaint was sustained, and he was restored to his prior position with back pay, according to the complaint. He quit several months later, however, and claimed that other inspection team members he had worked with had been moved to new positions when, according to management, they documented “too many defects.”
“Spirit Concealed the Defect”
In August 2023, news broke that Boeing had discovered a defect in its MAX 737s, delaying rollout of the four hundred planes it had set to deliver this year. Spirit had incorrectly manufactured key equipment for the fuselage system, as the company acknowledged in a press statement.

But these defects had been discovered by Spirit months before they became public, according to the December court filings.
The court documents claim that a former quality auditor with Spirit, Joshua Dean, identified the manufacturing defects — bulkhead holes that were improperly drilled — in October 2022, nearly a year before Boeing first said that the defect had been discovered. Dean identified the issue and sent his findings to supervisors on multiple occasions, telling management at one point that it was “the worst finding” he had encountered during his time as an auditor.

“The aft pressure bulkhead is a critical part of an airplane, which is necessary to maintain cabin pressure during flight,” the complaint says. “Dean reported this defect to multiple Spirit employees over a period of several months, including submitting formal written findings to his manager. However, Spirit concealed the defect.”

In April 2023, after Dean continued to raise concerns about the defects, Spirit fired him, the complaint says.

In October 2023, Boeing and Spirit announced they were expanding the scope of their inspections. The FAA has said it is monitoring the inspections, but said in October there was “no immediate safety concern” as a result of the bulkhead defects.
“Emphasis on Pushing Out Product Over Quality”
Workers cited in the federal complaint attributed the alleged problems at Spirit to a culture that prioritized moving products down the factory line as quickly as possible — at any cost. The company has been under pressure from Boeing to ramp up production, and in earnings calls, Spirit’s shareholders have pressed the company’s executives about its production rates.

According to the Financial Times, after the extended grounding of Boeing’s entire fleet of 737 Max airlines following two major crashes in 2018 and 2019, “the plane maker has sought to increase its output rate and gain back market share it lost to Airbus,” its European rival.

Spirit, which also produces airframe components for Airbus, has felt the pressure of that demand. As Shanahan noted in Spirit’s third-quarter earnings call on November 1, “When you look at the demand for commercial airplanes, having two of the biggest customers in the world and not being able to satisfy the demand, it should command our full attention.”

According to the court records, workers believed Spirit placed an “emphasis on pushing out product over quality.” Inspection workers were allegedly told to overlook defects on final walkthroughs, as Spirit “just wanted to ship its completed products as quickly as possible.”

Dean claimed to have noticed a significant deterioration in Spirit’s workforce after Spirit went through several rounds of mass layoffs in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the huge influx in government funding they received.
According to court documents, Dean said that “Spirit laid off or voluntarily retired a large number of senior engineers and mechanics, leaving a disproportionate number of new and less experienced personnel.”
“Over-Tightening or Under-Tightening That Could Threaten the Structural Integrity”
After the Alaska Airlines plane was grounded, United Airlines launched an independent inspection of its planes. Initial reporting shows that inspectors found multiple loose bolts throughout several Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. Alaska Airlines is currently conducting an audit of its aircraft.
Concerns about properly tightened equipment were detailed in the federal complaint.

“Auditors repeatedly found torque wrenches in mechanics’ toolboxes that were not properly calibrated,” said the complaint, citing another former Spirit employee. “This was potentially a serious problem, as a torque wrench that is out of calibration may not torque fasteners to the correct levels, resulting in over-tightening or under-tightening that could threaten the structural integrity of the parts in question.”

According to former employees cited in the court documents, in a company-wide “toolbox audit,” more than one hundred of up to 1,400 wrenches were found out of alignment.

On Spirit’s November earnings call, after investors pressed the company’s new CEO about its quality-control problems, Shanahan promised that the company was working to fix the issues — and its reputation.
“The mindset I have is that we can be zero defects,” he said. “We can eliminate all defects. . . . But every day, we have to put time and attention to that.”


 

Alaska Airlines jet door plug fittings fractured, bolts possibly 'weren't there at all,' NTSB says

By Lena Howland 
Tuesday, January 9, 2024 3:00PM

For the fourth day, San Francisco International Airport is experiencing serious cancellations and delays with more than 50 cancelled flights.

For the fourth day, San Francisco International Airport is experiencing serious cancellations and delays with more than 50 cancelled flights.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- For the fourth day in a row, San Francisco International Airport is experiencing serious cancellations and delays, with more than 50 cancelled flights and counting on Tuesday.

Passenger after passenger waited in line Tuesday morning, seeking help for cancelled or delayed flights impacted by the grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets.

The Boeing planes are grounded pending inspections after a mid-air blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight to Southern California.

"I wasn't so worried about another plug blowing off, as I was about the flight just being cancelled, that seemed to be the more cogent issue," Leslie, an Austin resident said.

RELATED: Missing door plug that blew off Alaska Airlines flight found in Portland backyard


A Portland teacher found the missing door plug from the Alaska Airlines flight in his backyard.

Leslie and her husband Neal say as soon as they saw they'd be boarding a 737 MAX 9 plane, they changed their flight to avoid any travel hassles.
The only problem was having to show up to the airport 12 hours earlier.

"We had a direct flight to Austin but now we're going to Seattle, sit around there for a couple hours and then fly to Austin," Neal, an Austin resident said. "It's making the trip at least four hours longer. That's a small price to pay compared to being stuck."

RELATED: United Airlines found loose bolts during preliminary Boeing 737-9 fleet inspections, company says

To add insult to injury, Gary Coleman was notified of his cancelled flight in the middle of the College Football Playoff National Championship, just as his team was losing.

"I was a little upset last night because it happened right during the game so we were losing the game and then they cancelled the flight, but within about a half hour, they rescheduled it," Coleman said. "I didn't need the extra stress but its all good now."

United Airlines crews found loose bolts during preliminary inspections of its 737 max 9 fleet and Alaska Airlines says its inspectors also discovered "some loose hardware."

RELATED: First a boom, then a rush of air: Here's what happened inside that Alaska Airlines flight

On ABC Tuesday morning, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy revealed new information about the plane involved in Friday's incident.

"In this situation, the fittings at the top of the door plug fractured," Homendy said. "We don't know if the bolts were loose. We don't know if bolts were in there fractured or possibly the bolts weren't there at all."

She says that's something that will be determined back in their laboratory.
"When these events occur, significant events occur, we have to figure out what happened here. Because we want to prevent it from happening again," she said.

RELATED: Federal officials order grounding of some Boeing 737 Max 9 jetliners after plane suffers a blowout


Alaska Airlines grounded all of its Boeing 737-9 aircraft after a window blew during a flight, forcing an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon.

Alaska Airlines said their crews have prepared each aircraft to be immediately ready for the required inspection when instructions are finalized.

Official inspections are expected to take about eight hours per plane.


 


 

 


FAA faces tough questions about Boeing oversight after 737 MAX emergency
By David Shepardson
January 9, 20245:46 PM CST

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration is facing questions about its oversight of planemaker Boeing (BA.N) following the emergency landing on Friday of an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX 9.

Mike Whitaker, who took over as the agency's head in late October, will testify before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Feb. 6, sources said. The hearing was in the works before the Alaska Airlines (ALK.N) flight and is expected to cover a broad range of issues.

The 737 MAX is certain to come up at the hearing, the sources said.
The FAA, which was without a permanent administrator for 18 months until Whitaker's 98-0 confirmation, has come under growing scrutiny after a series of potentially catastrophic near-miss aviation safety incidents, persistent air traffic control staffing shortages and a January 2023 pilot messaging database outage that disrupted 11,000 flights.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday asked the FAA to answer detailed questions about its handling of the Alaska Airlines incident.
The FAA MAX 9 grounding order "is the least that should be done," Blumenthal said, adding he wanted to know "what more the FAA is doing to ensure our skies are safe."

Blumenthal added: "This disturbing event is another black mark for Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft fleet and troublingly, appears to be part of a wider pattern."

The FAA grounded 171 MAX 9 airplanes on Saturday and said on Tuesday they would remain out of the sky until the agency was satisfied with Boeing's inspection and maintenance instructions.

Republican Senator J.D. Vance on Tuesday urged the Senate Commerce Committee to hold a hearing. "Every American deserves a full explanation from Boeing and the FAA on what’s gone wrong and on the steps that are being taken to ensure another incident does not occur in the future," he said.

The FAA has scrutinized Boeing's quality and other issues in recent years as it faced harsh criticism for its actions in the run-up to the MAX certification. Following two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019, the FAA grounded the plane for 20 months and mandated significant software and training improvements.

Boeing declined to comment on Tuesday.

The FAA continues to inspect each 737 MAX before an "airworthiness certificate is issued and cleared for delivery," the agency has noted. Typically the FAA delegates the final signoff on individual airplanes to the manufacturer once the model has been certified.

Alaska Airlines and the other U.S. 737 MAX 9 operator, United Airlines (UAL.O), said on Monday they found loose parts on multiple grounded aircraft.

The FAA did not directly answer questions about how it typically inspects those bolts before approving a plane for service. "The FAA inspects every airplane prior to issuing an airworthiness certificate," a spokesperson said.

The agency is still deciding whether to certify the smaller MAX 7. Whitaker told Reuters in an interview last month that he has no "specific timetable" to certify the plane, adding the agency will certify the plane when "we have all the data that we need and it is safe."

A 2020 congressional report concluded the MAX crashes "were the horrific culmination of a series of faulty technical assumptions by Boeing’s engineers, a lack of transparency on the part of Boeing’s management, and grossly insufficient oversight by the FAA."

After the Alaska Airlines data from last Friday's emergency landing was lost, National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy this week criticized the FAA's decision not to require retrofitting of airplanes with recorders that capture 25 hours of data.

The FAA has boosted Boeing oversight staffing and in 2022, the agency gave Boeing a shorter regulatory compliance program extension than the planemaker sought in order to "verify that Boeing completes required improvements."


 

Spirit AeroSystems statement on Alaska Airlines flight
by: Ryan Newton
Posted: Jan 8, 2024 / 07:14 AM CST
Updated: Jan 8, 2024 / 08:48 AM CST

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – Spirit AeroSystems released a statement following an Alaska Airlines flight in which a piece of fuselage blew off a Boeing airliner over Oregon on Friday.

The gaping hole in the side of the Alaska Airlines jet opened up where a “plug” covers an emergency exit that the airline does not use.

A spokesman for Spirit AeroSystems confirmed to The New York Times that Spirit installed door plugs on Max 9s, including the plug on the Alaska Airlines plane involved in Friday’s incident. The spokesman told The Associated Press that the plugs are assembled into 737 fuselages at Spirit’s factory in Wichita but declined further comment.

Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins wild card game on streaming service Peacock
Boeing declined to comment on the issue.
The plugs are on most Boeing 737 Max 9 jets. The Federal Aviation Administration has temporarily grounded those planes until they undergo inspections of the area around the door plug.

Spirit AeroSystems statement:
We are grateful the Alaska Airlines crew performed the appropriate procedures to land the airplane with all passengers and crew safe. At Spirit AeroSystems, our primary focus is the quality and product integrity of the aircraft structures we deliver.
Spirit is a committed partner with Boeing on the 737 program, and we continue to work together with them on this matter. Spirit is following the protocols set by the regulatory authorities that guide communication in these types of circumstances and we will share further information when appropriate.”
SPIRIT AEROSYSTEMS

 


Boeing CEO’s comeback plan for 2024 takes a blow five days in

Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max-9 aircraft grounded at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA) on Saturday. Alaska Airlines will ground its entire fleet of Boeing 737 Max-9 aircraft after a fuselage section in the rear part of the brand-new jet blew out shortly after takeoff last Friday. | BLOOMBERG

BY JULIE JOHNSSON
 
Jan 8, 2024

BLOOMBERG – Wrongly drilled holes, loose rudder bolts, and now a fuselage section that ejected during flight on a brand-new aircraft, leaving terrified passengers exposed to a gaping hole in the cabin at 16,000 feet (4,900 meters).
In just months, Boeing has suffered a series of quality lapses that threaten to erode trust in the manufacturing prowess of the biggest U.S. exporter, and notably its 737 Max aircraft, a crucial cash cow.

The latest, most serious, mishap occurred on the evening of Jan. 5, when a door-shaped panel ripped out as an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 climbed out of Portland, Oregon. Regulators reacted swiftly, grounding 171 of the variant less than 24 hours after the incident, including the entire fleet of 737 Max 9s in the United States. And while nobody was seriously injured, authorities said luck played a big part in the event not turning tragic.

For Boeing Chief Executive Officer Dave Calhoun, the Alaska Air episode is another blow to his efforts to stabilize the company after half a decade of upheaval, coming just a few days into a new year he had heralded as crucial to a turnaround. Boeing is still feeling the reverberations of two deadly 737 Max crashes almost five years ago that shook confidence in the company. Now Boeing’s fraught relationship with its biggest supplier — Spirit AeroSystems Holdings — stands to face fresh scrutiny.

"I would hope that they will quickly get to the bottom of this and see if it was truly a one-off,” said Richard Healing, a former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member, who now heads consulting firm Air Safety Engineering. "If it was just that airplane, there may have been poor workmanship done when they locked off that door. I would be looking at everything you can imagine.”
Cabin layout

The NTSB, which arrived on the scene in Portland within hours of the incident, will examine Boeing’s manufacturing process for the 737 Max 9 as it investigates what may have led to the panel’s blowout. Of particular interest are components around the door opening, including hinges and stop fittings, as well as the pressurization, Jennifer Homendy, the safety agency’s chair, said at a press conference.

The Alaska Air episode is another blow to Boeing CEO David Calhoun's efforts to stabilize the company after half a decade of upheaval, coming just a few days into a new year he had heralded as crucial to a turnaround. | BLOOMBERG

Boeing’s former Wichita, Kansas-based subsidiary builds about 70% of the 737’s frameset, according to Spirit’s website. The green aluminum fuselages are shipped by railcar to Boeing’s Renton, Washington, factory, where wings, tails and interiors are installed. These include different cabin configurations depending on the seating density.

In the stretched Max 9, customers can opt for additional emergency exits so that cabins can squeeze in more seats. Alaska Air and United Airlines Holdings opted to cover the door-shaped opening with a plug that’s indiscernible from the inside of the plane.

Investigators will likely look into how the doors are plugged and even question why they exist if they can come open, Healing said.

The hinged section is secured by four bolts and opens outward from the top, according to Chris Brady, a former head of the U.K. Flight Safety Committee.
"Something must have been amiss with at least one of those bolts,” he said on a video posted on YouTube.

Spirit has struggled with quality issues, high worker turnover, labor strife and financial stress since the COVID-19 pandemic and 2019 Boeing Max grounding. New CEO Pat Shanahan is shaking up operations and has struck a new pact with Boeing to put its top supplier on better footing.
Troubled history
The Alaska Air scare prompted U.S. regulators to order emergency inspections for about 171 of Boeing’s Max 9 models worldwide. While the disruption to air travel is likely to be short-lived — the inspections only take four to eight hours per jet — the repercussions will likely still be lingering when Calhoun outlines his road map for the year to investors during a Jan. 31 earnings call.

"It’s not good for anybody, especially given this aircraft’s history,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at aviation consultant AeroDynamic Advisory. "In the background of this, there is bad need for cultural changes that put senior corporate management more closely in touch with the design and manufacture of aircraft.”

The Alaska Air scare prompted U.S. regulators to order emergency inspections for about 171 of Boeing’s Max 9 models worldwide. | BLOOMBERG

Boeing said it supported the grounding and that it was in close touch with the regulator and with customers. A technical team from the U.S. planemaker is supporting the probe. For his part, Calhoun, who has led Boeing since early 2020, had previously cautioned that the road to a brighter future would be bumpy.
"When we set our recovery plans, we knew issues would come up along the way,” he said in a memo to workers in late October. "This is a complex long-cycle business and enduring change takes time.”

It’s too soon to know what caused the door plug to fail during the Alaska Air flight, and whether Boeing or Spirit made critical missteps. Boeing has ultimate responsibility for ensuring an aircraft is airworthy. Every jet in final assembly undergoes pressure tests to find leaks and ensure doors are sealed. And in the aftermath of the Max tragedies, Federal Aviation Administration inspectors must sign off before the workhorse jets are handed off to customers.

Zero defects
One of the consequences of the Alaska Air incident may be a slower increase to the 737 manufacturing pace than Boeing had planned for the year. The planemaker faces immense pressure to return its factories to 2019 rates at a time when customers are clamoring for the latest aircraft, and investors are expecting cash generation to surge.

Prior to the incident, analysts had predicted that Boeing would deliver about 580 of their 737-series jetliners this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s a considerable jump from the 375 to 400 deliveries that the company targeted for 2023. A delivery surge would also propel Boeing to its first annual profit since Calhoun took over as CEO.

"There is a risk of having to slow down the ramp,” said Aboulafia. "The aftermath could well be time-consuming and a diversion of resources.”
As the latest Max crisis unfolded, Boeing’s commercial airplanes chief, Stan Deal, and its senior vice president of sales, Brad McMullen, led teams of people reaching out to keep customers ahead of fast-moving developments. Hours before the FAA acted, United Airlines, the biggest operator of the Max 9 variant, had already begun pulling planes out of service at Boeing’s direction, starting with five Max 9 built in a similar time frame to the Alaska Air jet.

That’s in keeping with Calhoun’s philosophy of hands-off management, and pushing responsibility and resources to the company’s main business units. The Boeing CEO doesn’t stalk factory floors like his predecessor, Dennis Muilenburg, a Boeing lifer and engineer by training who was forced out over his handling of the Max grounding in the wake of the two accidents.

Calhoun described 2024 as an "important transitional year” to employees when he introduced Stephanie Pope as the company’s chief operating officer last month. Guiding the embattled planemaker through it just became a lot tougher for Calhoun and Pope, the frontrunner to succeed him. A key question is how many more bruising headlines Boeing can endure before customers start to waver.

"If Boeing doesn’t get its factories stabilized, it’s going to be a problem selling airplanes — if it isn’t already,” said Bloomberg Intelligence analyst George Ferguson. "You’ve got to have zero defects all the time. That’s the business.”


 


Boeing dismantles old aircraft to build NASA’s newest experimental plane
The aircraft will feature a Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) which is expected to help reduce carbon emissions by 30 percent

Ameya Paleja
Published: Jan 08, 2024 09:11 AM EST

US-based aircraft maker Boeing has taken the first steps toward building NASA's newest X-plane, the X-66A, after it began modification of an MD-90 aircraft at its facility in Palmdale, California. Announced last year, the X-66 A plane design aims to make aviation more environment-friendly and sustainable.

As a response to the increasing dangers of climate change, many countries have pledged to reduce their carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. This would require the aviation industry, responsible for 2.5 percent of global emissions, to ramp up its efforts to move away from fossil fuels.

However, newer methods of flying powered by electric motors or hydrogen fuel have not reached the level of maturity to displace long-haul flights or cargo transporters, which are crucial to maintaining the economy. In such a scenario, reducing emissions from currently available technology is key to reducing emissions. This is what NASA is aiming for through the X-66 project.


 


Diamond Factory Maintenance Mis-Rigged DA42 Rudder
By Russ Niles 
Published: January 8, 2024
Updated: January 9, 2024

Canada’s Transportation Safety Board says Diamond Aircraft’s factory maintenance staff mis-rigged the rudder cables on a DA42NG, contributing to an accident that heavily damaged the twin. In its final report the TSB said the plane, registered to the company’s U.S. sales division, was on its post-maintenance test flight on May 25, 2022, when it yawed left on takeoff and the pilot was unable to properly control it. 

The aircraft landed heavily on the grass at London Airport, where Diamond Aircraft has its North American headquarters, and was badly damaged. The pilot suffered minor injuries. Diamond did not immediately respond to an after-hours email request for comment, but we will publish its response if it is forthcoming.

Examination of the aircraft revealed that rudder cables had been installed incorrectly after some worn control cable guide tubes were replaced during heavy maintenance of the aircraft. The plane was undergoing a 2,000-hour inspection and overhaul, which involves partial disassembly of the airframe, replacement of the engines and general refurbishment of the aircraft.

The TSB report said the worn tubes were discovered by an apprentice mechanic who was then tasked with replacing them. When he put the system back together again, he set up the cables incorrectly and that resulted in the rudder moving in the opposite direction to control movements. “This was the first time the apprentice changed the rudder cable guide tubes on a DA 42 and he was not aware that they had to cross over each other,” the report said. “The apprentice’s previous experience with rudder controls at Diamond Aircraft Industries Inc. was on a DA 20 aircraft. The rudder cables on that aircraft run parallel to each other.”

The TSB said the guide tube snag was not properly documented and the mechanics who oversaw the apprentice did not give him guidance in the correct configuration of the control cables. “The team lead did not provide the apprentice with any reference material, such as the manufacturer’s installation drawings,” the report says. “The team lead also did not ensure that the apprentice knew and understood that the rudder cable guide tubes crossed over each other in the rear fuselage, as described in the AMM.”

The TSB said the pilot did a thorough preflight inspection but it’s difficult for the pilot to see the rudder when checking control movement and he did not notice that the rudder moved opposite to control inputs.


 


STC vs ASTM: What’s best for unleaded fuels?

By Ben Visser · December 20, 2023 

In a recent column, I recommended that in the future general aviation actually needed two grades of unleaded fuel, with one being an unleaded 100 octane product and the other a less expensive 82 octane fuel based on automotive fuels.
We received a lot of great feedback on the column, which is always appreciated.
But one of the points I took away from the discussion was that there is some confusion as to how the ASTM process compares to Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) approval.

Some people even thought that they were basically the same.
In reality they are very different and most of that difference goes back to our old friend liability.

In a certified aircraft, the type certificate list all of the parts and consumables that go into the aircraft. If you could examine the type certificate of almost every aircraft in the general aviation fleet, it would note that the fuel needed for operating that aircraft must meet the ASTM D910 specification for a listed octane rating.

In case of an engine failure, accident, or incident, because the type certificate indicated that the manufacturer has specified a list of parameters for the fuel, all the fuel supplier is required to prove is that their product meets that specification.

Under the same conditions, a fuel supplier that supplies a fuel under an STC must prove that their product did not cause the problem in any way. This is because the manufacturer has not agreed that the STC fuel will meet the “needs” of their engine.
In fact, in a high dollar lawsuit the lawyers will name everyone involved and hope that the different parties will implicate each other.

This brings us to the debate on how to approve the new 100 octane unleaded fuels.
General Aviation Modifications Inc. (GAMI) is going the STC route for now, earning FAA approval in September 2022 for every piston engine in the FAA database.

To use this fuel, an aircraft owner must buy an STC. And, if there is a problem, GAMI will face the liability issues on its own.

The other fuel suppliers are planning on going the ASTM specification route.
Once a fuel is approved through this method, it is considered a “fleet approval,” which means it is approved for all general aviation piston aircraft engines. No STC need be purchased, as engine manufacturers will issue documents stating that these fuels are approved in all of their engines.

This will be a much safer path forward — in terms of liability — for the fuel providers.

But there will be one big problem still facing the general aviation community: Who will approve fuel for the orphan engines out there?
If 100LL is outlawed, what will the Wright, Franklin, and other orphan engine aircraft use?

Many of the private planes that use these engines can fly in the experimental category, but aircraft that are used in commercial service cannot do that.
So will they just need to be scrapped?

Or will the FAA or EPA say they will approve the use and take on the liability risk?
I think not.

I believe that the only organization that could do that is the US Congress — maybe — and they have trouble deciding what to do for lunch.

I do not see them taking on a problem like this, especially since there is so little money in the GA world.

ABOUT BEN VISSER
Ben Visser is an aviation fuels and lubricants expert who spent 33 years with Shell Oil. He has been a private pilot since 1985.


 

EcoPulse Hybrid-Electric Aircraft Makes First Flight Of Test Program
By Mark Phelps 
Published: December 6, 2023
Updated: December 7, 2023

The EcoPulse, a modified Daher TBM hybrid-electric distributed-propulsion aircraft demonstrator, performed its first test flight on Nov. 29. As part of the 100-minute sortie, the aircraft activated its ePropellers, which are powered by a battery and a turbogenerator. The EcoPulse is a joint development of Daher, Safran and Airbus “to support aviation’s decarbonization roadmap.”

The flight departed from Daher’s headquarters airport in Tarbes, France. The mission was described as the culmination of multiple technical milestones, including a ground-test campaign and 10 hours of flight testing with the electrical power system inactive. Eric Dalbiès, Safran’s Executive VP of Strategy and Chief Technology Officer, said, “We confirmed today that this disruptive propulsion system works in flight, which paves the way for more sustainable aviation. The lessons learned from upcoming flight tests will feed into our technology roadmap and strengthen our position as leader in future all-electric and hybrid-electric propulsive systems.”

Besides activating the electric propulsion system, the crew also verified the functioning of the flight control computer, high-voltage battery pack, distributed electronic propulsion array and the hybrid electric turbogenerator.

Pascal Laguerre, Daher Chief Technology Officer, said, “The flight campaign will give Daher invaluable data on the effectiveness of the onboard technologies, including distributed propulsion, high-voltage batteries and hybrid-electric propulsion.”


 


Congressmen Call For Floating Flight Recorders
By Russ Niles 
Published: January 2, 2024
Updated: January 3, 2024

Tennessee congressmen Steve Cohen and Tim Burchett are calling on the FAA to require cockpit data and voice recorders be made to jettison from aircraft on impact with water and to float to the surface, in comments on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would require recorders to retain the previous 25 hours of data and voice communications. The current rules call for only two hours of data. In their comments, Cohen and Burchett said they approve the 25-hour rule and want to enhance safety further by making the recorders much easier to find after a crash.

Last May, the congressmen have introduced the Safe Aviation and Flight Enhancement Act, which would include the jettisonable recorders. They say such systems would eliminate the costly and dangerous underwater recovery of recorders, which are secured in a cabinet in the fuselage but are often dislodged in a crash. “Air crash victim families deserve assurances that search and rescue teams will have rapid access to a crash location’s site to speed survivor recovery efforts, and that victim families will have access to timely and factual information regarding the cause of an accident and the fate of their loved ones,” the bill says.


 


The sky’s the limit: The changing face of in-flight entertainment
Seatback screens arrived in the 1980s but are they are on their way out?
02 January 2024 - 13:00
BY OLUSOLA ADEWUMI JOHN

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The first in-flight movie was shown in 1921 and seatback screens were introduced in 1988. 
Image: kyolshin / 123rf.com

These days air travel is synonymous with some form of in-flight entertainment, encompassing everything from the reception offered by the crew to the food choices and digital content.

The services all add value to flying for customers. Passengers are so familiar with in-flight entertainment that to travel without it is unthinkable.

The in-flight entertainment and connectivity market grew to $5.9bn (R108bn at current exchange rates) in 2019, a testament to its economic impact on the airlines and the GDP of countries with airline carriers.

In-flight entertainment is so ubiquitous that, even if all other airline services were offered, the airline ensures a refund is made to the passenger affected if television content cannot be accessed.

BRIEF HISTORY
In-flight entertainment has evolved significantly over the years. Before media was introduced, passengers entertained themselves by reading books or with food and drink services.

The original aim of bringing in-flight entertainment into cabins was to attract more customers, drawing inspiration from different sources, including the theatrical and domestic media environments. It was not initially for the comfort and ease of travelling, as it is today.

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In-flight entertainment began as an experiment in 1921, when 11 Aeromarine Airways passengers were shown the film Howdy Chicago! on a screen hung in the cabin during the flight. Another experiment was carried out in 1925 when 12 passengers on board an Imperial Airlines flight from London were shown the film The Lost World.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that in-flight movies became mainstream for airlines. Trans World Airlines became the first carrier to regularly offer feature films during flights, using a unique film system developed by David Flexer, then-president of Inflight Motion Pictures.

Starting in 1964, in-flight entertainment evolved to include media types like 16mm film, closed-circuit television, live television broadcasts and magnetic tape. In the 1970s, for example, planes might feature a large screen with a 16mm projector in one part of the plane, while small screens hung overhead in another section.

Seatback screens were introduced in 1988 when Airvision installed 6.9cm screens on the backs of airline seats for Northwest Airlines. They have since morphed into the larger screens we are familiar with today, and they are found on nearly every airline.

ENTERTAINMENT TODAY
Most airlines have personal televisions for every passenger on long-haul flights. On-demand streaming and internet access are also the norm. Despite initial concerns about speed and cost, in-flight services are becoming faster and more affordable.
In-flight entertainment includes movies, music, radio talk shows, TV talk shows, documentaries, magazines, stand-up comedy, culinary shows, sports shows and kids’ shows.

The rise of personal devices, such as tablets and smartphones, could spell the end for seatback screens.
Image: xartproduction / 123rf.com

However, the rise of personal devices, such as tablets and smartphones, could spell the end for seatback screens. A number of US airlines, including American Airlines, United Airlines and Alaska Air, have removed seatback screens from their domestic planes.

This decline is par for the course. To arrive at the complex system used by aircraft today, in-flight entertainment went through different stages, as identified by aviation scholar DA Reed.

It started with an idea phase which saw the conception of the idea, followed by an arms race phase where most airlines adopted some form of it. Airlines are facing challenges in the final — and current — phase of evolution, and are dealing with failures linked to business concept flaws or low revenue.

Now that most air travellers carry electronic devices, fewer airlines are installing seatback screens. From an economic standpoint, this makes sense for airlines: removing seatback screens improves fuel costs and allows airlines to install slimmer seats, allowing for more passengers.

COMPETITIVE TOOL
At some point in the evolution of in-flight entertainment, it started to serve as more than a form of entertainment or comfort. Now it’s also a competitive tool for airline advertisements, and a form of cultural production.

In-flight entertainment has become an economic platform for investors, business people, manufacturers and entertainment providers, especially Hollywood. It also plays a key role in promoting the national culture of destination countries.

However, the evolution of in-flight entertainment hasn’t been without challenges. As a form of cultural production, it often reflects the interests of advertisers, governments and business entities. It also follows that certain ideas, products and cultures are sold to passengers via in-flight entertainment.

The lucrative practice of capturing and selling passengers’ attention to advertisers was not limited to screens. In-flight magazines have always been packed with advertisements, and by the late 1980s the advertisements had spread to napkins and the audio channels.

Despite its shortcomings and precarious future, in-flight entertainment continues to offer passengers a sense of comfort, alleviating concerns about being suspended more than 30,000 feet above sea level. With many of us likely to be flying as the holidays come to a close, remember your comfort is partly thanks to this innovation.
• This article originally appeared on The Conversation. 


Curt Lewis