Tag: 737 MAX

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FAA grounds 737 MAX jets, citing new evidence

Image: Southwest 737 MAX
An artist’s conception shows a Southwest Airlines 737 MAX taking to the air. (Credit: Boeing)

The Federal Aviation Administration today ordered the temporary grounding of Boeing’s next-generation 737 MAX jets, due to “new evidence” collected at the site of Sunday’s Ethiopian Airlines crash as well as data transmitted via satellite.

In its emergency order, the FAA said the evidence pointed to what appeared to be some similarities between the circumstances of the 737 MAX 8 crash in Ethiopia and the loss of a Lion Air 737 MAX 8 in Indonesia last October. Sunday’s crash killed all 157 people aboard Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, while the October crash killed all 189 people aboard Lion Air Flight 610.

The similarities “warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause for the two incidents that needs to be better understood and addressed,” the FAA said.

Airlines that fly 737 MAX jets in defiance of the order could have their certificates revoked, the FAA said.

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Regulators ground 737 MAX jets in Europe

Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX
The first Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet delivered to Ethiopian Airlines takes off in July 2018. (Boeing Photo)

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency has suspended all flight operations of Boeing 737 MAX jets in EU countries in the wake of March 10’s fatal plane crash in Ethiopia, even though the Federal Aviation Administration insisted the model was airworthy.

EASA said it issued its own airworthiness directive “as a precautionary measure,” and suspended all 737-8 and 737-9 flights into, out of or within the European Union.

The suspension follows this morning’s decision by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority to suspend operations and ban 737 MAX jets from flying over British airspace until further notice.

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MIT trolls Donald Trump over airplane tweets

Donald Trump and Air Force One
President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One during a visit to Key West, Fla., in 2018. (White House Photo)

In the wake of March 10’s fatal Boeing 737 MAX airplane crash in Ethiopia, President Donald Trump took computer scientists to task today for making airplanes “too complex to fly.” And the computer scientists struck back.

It all took place on Twitter, of course.

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737 MAX jet crash kills 157 in Ethiopia

Ethiopian Airlines crash site
Ethiopian Airlines CEO Tewolde GebreMariam visits the accident scene. (Ethiopian Airlines Photo via Twitter)

Airlines in China and three other countries have suspended flights of their Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets in light of March 10’s catastrophic crash in Ethiopia.

Ethiopian Airlines reported today that both of the “black boxes” from the 737-8 that crashed — the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder — have been recovered. However, The Associated Press quoted an unnamed airline official as saying that one of the recorders was partially damaged. “We will see what we can retrieve from it,” the official told AP.

The crash killed all 157 people aboard the plane, including at least 21 U.N. workers. Many of those workers were heading to an environmental conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

It was the second fatal accident involving the 737-8 model in less than five months. The earlier crash killed 189 people on a Lion Air flight in Indonesia.

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What did pilots know about 737 MAX risk?

Maria Bartiromo and Dennis Muilenburg
Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo asks Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg about the Lion Air 737 MAX crash. (Fox Business Network)

What did 737 MAX pilots know, and when did they know it? That’s become a subject of debate in the wake of last month’s fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia and the potential role played by an automatic control system that Boeing added to new-model 737s.

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Boeing issues bulletin in wake of 737 MAX crash

Lion Air 737 MAX
An artist’s conception shows the Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet. (Boeing Illustration)

Boeing says it has issued an operations manual bulletin to address concerns about erroneous readings from a sensor that has been implicated in last week’s fatal crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX 8.

The jet dove into the Java Sea at high speed on Oct. 29, minutes after its takeoff from Jakarta in Indonesia. All 189 people aboard the plane were killed. Safety investigators said that pilots on the plane were dealing with inaccurate airspeed readings and asked to return to the airport just before the crash.

Boeing’s newly issued bulletin focuses on the 737 MAX’s angle-of-attack sensors, or AOA sensors, which are supposed to provide data about the angle at which wind is passing over the airplane’s wings. Boeing said the action was taken after the Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee indicated that the Lion Air jet experienced erroneous input from one of those sensors.

In a statement released late Nov. 6, Boeing said the bulletin directs operators to “existing flight crew procedures to address circumstances where there is erroneous input from an AOA sensor.”

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How Boeing re-engineered the 737’s landing gear

Gary Hamatani
Gary Hamatani, chief product engineer for Boeing’s 737 MAX project, uses a half-scale model to demonstrate how the MAX 10’s landing gear will work. (Boeing Video)

When Boeing’s customers said they wanted a stretched-out 737 MAX jet, there was one big problem: The 737’s landing gear was too short to handle it.

Fortunately, Boeing’s engineers came to the rescue, with a stretched-out landing gear to match the fuselage of what’s now known as the 737 MAX 10.

The way the engineers resolved the issue, well more than a year ago, is a testament to how Boeing uses technology to accommodate market demands, even if those demands seem unmeetable at first glance.

“We always like to look at how we can address market demand with the technology and engineering solutions that would be required,” Gary Hamatani, chief project engineer for Boeing’s 737 MAX program, told GeekWire this week.

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Boeing’s 737 MAX 7 jet aces first flight

Boeing 737 MAX 7 jet and Mount Rainier
Boeing’s first 737 MAX 7 jet takes a photogenic spin over Mount Rainier. (Boeing Photo)

For its first test flight, the newest and smallest sibling in Boeing’s top-selling 737 family of jets, the 737 MAX 7, took a three-hour trip today from Renton, Wash., to Seattle’s Boeing Field, just eight miles away.

Getting from Point A to Point B wasn’t the point: Instead, the circuitous journey was designed to give test pilots a chance to put the plane through its paces for the first time in the air. The flight path ranged from the tip of Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula to Moses Lake in central Washington, with several photogenic circles around Mount Rainier added for good measure.

Test pilots Jim Webb and Keith Otsuka were greeted with applause as they emerged from the cockpit at Boeing Field, at the end of a trouble-free flight.

“Everything we saw during today’s flight shows that the MAX 7 is performing exactly as designed,” Keith Leverkuhn, vice president and general manager of the 737 MAX program for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, said in a news release. “I know our airline customers are going to enjoy the capabilities this airplane will bring to their fleets.”

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Boeing (and Guinness) celebrate 10,000th 737 jet

737 celebration
Boeing employees surround the 10,000th 737 jet to be produced. (Boeing Photo)

Boeing 737 jets are rolling out of the factory in Renton, Wash., more than once a day, but the Southwest 737 MAX 8 jet that emerged today brought hundreds of Boeing employees outside to watch: It’s the 10,000th 737 jet to be produced.

The occasion was marked by the Guinness World Records’ renewed recognition of the 737 as the world’s most produced commercial jet aircraft model — and by a pep talk from Kevin McAllister, Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ president and CEO.

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Boeing makes first 737 MAX delivery

Malindo Air 737 MAX
Malindo Air’s first 737 MAX 8 jet is already painted in livery that reflects the airline’s future rebranding as Batik Air Malaysia. (Boeing Photo)

Boeing today marked the first delivery of a new-generation 737 MAX jet with an official handover to Malaysia-based Malindo Air at the Seattle Delivery Center.

The delivery came after Boeing sent about 30 of the engines for its 737 MAX planes back to their manufacturer due to concerns about potentially defective turbine disks.

Those concerns cropped up last week. and forced Boeing to ground its MAX fleet for several days. Inspectors found that the plane Malindo received was unaffected by the flaw, and Boeing says it’s now gotten the go-ahead from the Federal Aviation Administration to resume all flight activities.

Malindo, which is changing its name to Batik Air Malaysia later this year, will be the first airline to fly the 737 MAX 8 commercially.

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