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Where were the acerbic, scathing employees when MCAS was designed?
A Boeing 737 MAX in Renton, Wash., Dec. 16, 2019. PHOTO: LINDSEY WASSON/REUTERS
The latest crop of Boeing emails is a torment to the company in its struggle to get the 737 MAX into the air, but a secret that should not be a secret is that all of corporate America, not just Boeing, lives these days by employing creative, freethinking people who spout off acerbically, critically and colorfully in electronic messages.
Think of the Sony emails leaked by presumed North Korean hackers. My own corporate overlords in the media business have lived in this world longer than most. When a General Mills executive was hired to cut costs at the Los Angeles Times in 1995, the newsroom immediately dubbed him the “cereal killer.” The executive was philosophical. After all, his new company employed too many sardonic, highly verbal people to expect anything else.
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Aerospace giant’s deliveries also slump to 380 jets, the lowest since 2005
Boeing Co. said deliveries and new orders for its jetliners hit their lowest point in more than a decade as the global grounding of the 737 MAX undermined the aerospace giant’s business.
The U.S. plane maker in 2019 handed over 380 aircraft, including military versions of its jetliners, a 14-year-low that compares with a record 863 deliveries by European rival Airbus SE. Boeing delivered 806 planes in 2018, a high for the company.
The Chicago-based company last year brought in new orders for 246 commercial jets of all types, its lowest tally before cancellations and model swaps since 2003.
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Iran’s admission that its armed forces shot down a Ukrainian passenger airliner appeared intended to salvage its credibility at a time of heightened international tension and domestic unrest. Instead, it triggered quick anger from Iranians aimed at the country’s leadership.
Security forces in Tehran fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of people who took to the streets in protest against the military, which on Saturday acknowledged shooting down the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 by mistake.
Some Iranians blamed their leadership for incompetence and for lying during the first three days after the crash when it denied Western claims the plane had been hit by an Iranian missile, killing 176 people. Hundreds gathered outside Amirkabir University of Technology in the capital, where some young men tore down posters of Qassem Soleimani, the prominent general who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad last week and mourned as a national hero.
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There is no easy way out of “flight shame.”
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg’s warnings against air travel seem to be having an effect, particularly in Europe. In a recent survey by Swiss bank UBS, 21% of respondents in the U.S., the U.K., Germany and France said they had cut back on flying this year. Perhaps more importantly, lawmakers are listening: Starting next year, France will impose a tax on outbound flight tickets.
Airlines are looking for ways to clean themselves up. Last week, U.K. budget carrier EasyJet said it would become the first major airline to operate with net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by buying carbon offsets. British Airways -owner IAG recently said it was on its own path toward carbon neutrality in 2050.
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United Airlines Holdings Inc. struck a deal to buy 50 long-range Airbus SE EADSY 0.01% jets to replace its aging fleet of Boeing Co. BA -0.97% 757s, which are due to be retired in the coming years.
The airline will use the single-aisle A321XLR jets beginning in 2024 to fly from its hubs near New York and Washington, D.C., to European destinations, United Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella said Tuesday. He said the aircraft will likely open up new routes with its longer flying capability.
Mr. Nocella said United hasn’t ruled out buying Boeing’s proposed midsize aircraft, known as the NMA. Boeing has yet to decide whether to build the jet as it focuses on returning the 737 MAX to service after two recent fatal crashes. It had hoped to have the new midsize plane in service by around 2025.
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LONDON— Ryanair Holdings RYAAY -0.37% PLC said it would cut jobs and close two bases as it warned traffic growth would slow next year because of new delays in deliveries of its first Boeing Co. BA -0.97% 737 MAX aircraft.
The European budget carrier is one of Boeing’s biggest customers for the embattled jet and had expected to receive its first MAX planes this spring. However, the plane has been grounded since March after two fatal crashes and it still isn’t clear when it will resume flying.
Citing that uncertainty, Ryanair said Wednesday it had again revised its summer schedule for next year based on receiving just 10 MAX aircraft in time for the busy travel season, rather than the 20 it previously planned.
As a result, the company now expects to carry 156 million passengers in the year ending March 31, 2021, compared with the latest revised guidance for 157 million.
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Agency contends plane maker knowingly certified some 130 Boeing 737 jets despite installing suspect parts.
The proposed penalty doesn’t apply to any 737 MAX models, the latest version of Boeing’s best-selling workhorse jets that has been grounded for months. PHOTO: GARY HE/REUTERS
Boeing Co. was hit with a proposed $3.9 million penalty by U.S. air-safety officials who said the company installed defective parts inside the wings of around 130 737 NG aircraft and then knowingly vouched they met all federal safety requirements.
As part of Friday’s action by the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency indicated that the parts—designed to guide movable panels called slats on the front of wings—were used despite being identified as potentially substandard by a Boeing subcontractor in the fall of 2018. Over the next eight months, according to the FAA, the Chicago plane maker certified the affected jets as meeting all airworthiness requirements.
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Partnered up with Airbus, an innovative London design firm is fine-tuning app-controlled seats you can adjust on your smartphone
Four years ago, the London-based industrial designer Benjamin Hubert quietly closed down his namesake practice. “I kept getting approached to come up with yet another chair,” says Hubert, 35. “And I very much wanted to move beyond that.” He soon re-emerged as the founder and creative director of the strategic agency Layer Design.
The pivot paid off. Today, Layer is a firm of around 30 international creatives with expertise across industrial, experiential and digital design. The studio’s clients range from Vitra and Braun to Nike and Google.
Hubert explains that Layer’s work, which is both material focused and tech confident, sits at the intersection of two ends of the design spectrum: “On one end you have highly crafted, lifestyle-driven product and accessories, while on the other you have super-strategic industrial design or branding work. We bring together the softness of the former and the rigor of the latter.”
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