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Indonesia to Fault 737 MAX Design, U.S. Oversight in Lion Air Crash Report

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Published: Monday, 30 September 2019 11:34

Indonesian investigators have determined that design and oversight lapses played a central role in the fatal crash of a Boeing 737 MAX jet in October, according to people familiar with the matter, in what is expected to be the first formal government finding of fault.

The draft conclusions, these people said, also identify a string of pilot errors and maintenance mistakes as causal factors in the fatal plunge of the Boeing Co. plane into the Java Sea, echoing a preliminary report from Indonesia last year.

Misfires of an automated flight-control feature called MCAS on the MAX fleet led to the nosedive of the Lion Air jet and a similar crash of an Ethiopian Airlines MAX shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa in March. The two crashes took 346 lives, prompted the grounding of all 737 MAX planes and disrupted the global aviation industry.

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Thomas Cook Shuts Down, Forcing Britain to Fly Thousands Home

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Published: Monday, 23 September 2019 15:32

LONDON—British travel agency Thomas Cook was born to cater to moneyed Victorians, taking them on grand tours around Europe and the U.S. It evolved over nearly two centuries into a charter service for European budget holidaymakers.

Early Monday, the 178-year-old company went bust, stranding as many as 500,000 of these modern-day globe-trotters and triggering what the U.K. government said was its biggest-ever peacetime repatriation.

The marooning of an estimated 150,000 U.K.-based travelers alone by the bankruptcy set off round-the-clock news coverage here. It also provided newly minted Prime Minister Boris Johnson —already fighting both the European Union and his country’s Parliament over Brexit—a fresh crisis.

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The New Airport Congestion: Plane Spotters Crowd Fancy Hotel Bars

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Published: Wednesday, 11 September 2019 18:19

The new TWA Hotel at JFK cracks down on miserly aviation hobbyists; ‘it was getting crazy crowded’.  At the rooftop pool bar at the new TWA Hotel, nobody watches as the sun sets over the distant Manhattan skyline.

But when a British Airways 747 takes off, a half a dozen heads turn in unison to admire a rare retro paint scheme on the jumbo jet: a midnight-blue belly and the airline’s coat-of-arms emblazoned on the tail.

“All the action is right in front of you,” says Eric Dunetz, who has whiled away several weekends at the pool bar since the hotel opened in May, sometimes for upward of 10 hours at a time. “It’s a good place to relax and just watch planes.”

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Airbus Harnessing AI in Bid to Save Millions on Finance Tasks

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Published: Wednesday, 04 September 2019 18:18

The aircraft maker’s Americas unit is digitizing the approval of expense reports and payment of invoices

An Airbus A350 XWB prepares for landing. The aircraft maker’s Americas division is using artificial intelligence to shave costs from its expense report approval process. 

Airbus SE is using artificial intelligence to squeeze cost out of its finance function, an experiment launched in the aircraft maker’s Americas division that could save the corporation millions of dollars annually if rolled out in other regions.

It’s one of the latest examples of how companies across sectors are digitizing operations to increase efficiency, reduce human error and free up employees for tasks that require more human judgment, such as strategic planning, analysis and audits.

“Companies can now automate highly repetitive activity at a lower cost with a higher degree of accuracy,” said David Axson, head of the CFO consulting practice at Accenture Strategy, a unit of consulting firm Accenture PLC. “This especially applies to high-volume-use cases like accounts payable.”

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