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Operators of certain 737 Next Generation planes will be required to make inspections, the FAA said. The cracking was found in the plane’s pickle forks, which attach the plane’s body to its wing structure, CNN affiliate KOMO reported. Pickle forks are designed to last more than 90,000 landings and takeoffs without cracking, the affiliate said, and there could be dire results if the system fails, it said. In a statement, Boeing said the “cracking issue” was found on a small number of airplanes. “No in-service issues have been reported,” the company said. “Over the coming days, we will work closely...

Federal safety investigators on Thursday said Boeing overestimated how well pilots could handle a flurry of alerts when things go wrong on its 737 Max planes, which have been grounded since March after two fatal crashes killed a total of 346 people. The National Transportation Safety Board issued a series of recommendations for aircraft safety assessments, including factoring in human responses when things go awry, the first formal guidelines since the crashes. A flight-control system designed to prevent the planes from stalling misfired on both crashed flights: a Lion Air 737 Max in Indonesia last October and an Ethiopian...

What we had in the two downed airplanes was a textbook failure of airmanship. In broad daylight, these pilots couldn’t decipher a variant of a simple runaway trim, and they ended up flying too fast at low altitude, neglecting to throttle back and leading their passengers over an aerodynamic edge into oblivion. [Extreme length]

quite disturbing to learn that, contrary to what the press had .. assured us about a supposedly disgruntled aircraft mechanic who got caught trying to disable a Boeing 737, the guy had ISIS video on his cell phone. ... Doesn't everyone with labor beefs against his boss have ISIS video murders on his cell phone? ... Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani might just have been motivated by ISIS's brand of Islamism, not a woikin' man's desire for more overtime. The gullible media reported it otherwise, always eager to look the other way on Islamist terror. ... Alani's phone also had a...

Federal Aviation Administrator Steve Dickson says he won’t allow the Boeing 737 Max jets return to the skies for service until he personally flies the plane himself. “I’m the final sign-off authority in the U.S., and I’m not going to sign off on the aircraft until I would fly it myself,” Dickson told NBC News during an interview in Las Vegas. NBC Correspondent Tom Costello pressed Dickson, a former pilot who is licensed to fly the 737, if he will actually pilot the plane on a short flight before officially approving the Max for commercial operation. “I will fly the...

Almost as soon as the wheels of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 spun free from the runway March 10, the instruments in front of Capt. Yared Getachew went haywire. The digital displays for altitude, airspeed and other basic information showed dramatically different readings from those in front of his co-pilot. The controls in Capt. Getachew’s hands started shaking to warn him the plane was climbing too steeply and was in imminent danger of falling from the sky. Soon, a cascade of warning tones and colored lights and mechanical voices filled the cockpit. The pilots spoke in clipped bursts. “Command!” Capt. Getachew...

SEATTLE — In the days after the first crash of Boeing’s 737 Max, engineers at the Federal Aviation Administration came to a troubling realization: They didn’t fully understand the automated system that helped send the plane into a nose-dive, killing everyone on board. Engineers at the agency scoured their files for information about the system designed to help avoid stalls. They didn’t find much. Regulators had never independently assessed the risks of the dangerous software known as MCAS when they approved the plane in 2017. More than a dozen current and former employees at the F.A.A. and Boeing who spoke...

Boeing has bested Airbus as the world's largest aircraft maker for most of this decade. That's about to change in dramatic fashion. Airbus' commanding lead is especially significant because the race between the two companies has historically been tight. Last year, for example, Boeing delivered 806 aircraft last year to Airbus' 800. 2015 was the only year this decade in which one of the two airplane manufacturers delivered 100 more planes than the other. The gap between them is almost certainly going to get wider. Boeing has not been able to deliver any of its bestselling 737 Max planes since...

Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed records from Boeing relating to the production of the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina, where there have been allegations of shoddy work, according to two sources familiar with the investigation. The subpoena was issued by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the sources said. DOJ is also conducting a criminal investigation into the certification and design of the 737 MAX after two deadly crashes of that jetliner. The 787 subpoena significantly widens the scope of the DOJ’s scrutiny of safety issues at Boeing. The two sources who revealed the subpoena spoke on condition of anonymity because of...

While the crashes remain under investigation, preliminary reports showed that a new stabilization system pushed both planes into steep nosedives from which the pilots could not recover. The issue is known in aviation vernacular as runaway stabilizer trim. In simulator tests, government pilots discovered that a microprocessor failure could push the nose of the plane toward the ground. It is not known whether the microprocessor played a role in either crash. When testing the potential failure of the microprocessor in the simulators, "it was difficult for the test pilots to recover in a matter of seconds," one of the sources...

Speaking at a final press conference from Le Bourget airfield outside the French capital on Thursday, Airbus sales chief Christian Scherer said the European planemaker never received a request for proposals—a document that formally launches bidding for most major aircraft contracts—from IAG SA, the owner of British Airways. The secret negotiations between Boeing and IAG led to the biggest surprise of the week-long show: a letter of intent from the carrier to purchase 200 of the Max aircraft, a model that is grounded following two fatal crashes. IAG is currently an Airbus-only narrow-body customer and has said it plans to...

Boeing Co. won a huge endorsement for its troubled 737 Max aircraft: The parent company of British Airways promised to build its future short-haul fleet around the model with a plan to buy 200 jets. In a commitment valued at $24 billion, IAG signed a letter of intent to take the single-aisle planes between 2023 and 2027, Boeing announced Tuesday. It was the first deal for the 737 Max since the plane — the best-selling model in Boeing’s history — was grounded in March after two deadly crashes. The pact ends months of unrelenting bad news for Boeing’s flagship aircraft,...

Miami After takeoff, the Boeing 737 suddenly warns pilots that the plane is about to lose lift and stall, an erroneous signal from a bad sensor. The control column shakes, loudly. Pilot Roddy Guthrie diagnoses the problem—and then the plane’s nose suddenly pitches down, on its own. Emergency No. 2. He pulls back on the control column to keep climbing and gets the airplane back to the proper orientation, nose up. But it happens again, with more force. And then a third time, with even more force, so that he’s looking almost straight down at the ground—the most terrifying sight...

A debate over safety has embroiled Boeing's 737. Today, a look at questions about its rudder that grew out of a 1991 disaster, and at the role Boeing takes in investigations.

More than 300 Boeing 737 jets, including the Max, may have faulty wing parts that don’t meet strength and durability standards, the Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday, following a joint investigation with the aircraft manufacturer. The FAA plans to order airlines to remove and replace the parts if their aircraft are affected, the agency said. As many as 148 parts made by a Boeing supplier could be “susceptible to premature failure or cracks,” the FAA said in a statement about the slat tracks. Slats are pieces on the front of the wing and move along a track to create lift....

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said he would trust his own family in a 737 Max jet after testing new software in the wake of two deadly crashes. O'Donnell: The first crash, Flight 610 that crashed into the Java Sea about 12 minutes after takeoff killed 189 people on board. What's your understanding of what brought that flight down? Muilenburg: Well first of all, I have to respect the fact that the investigation process is still going on. We know there was inaccurate sensor data that came into the airplane and there appeared to be a maintenance issue with that sensor....

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has officially joined Boeing's board of directors. Haley was voted in at a shareholder meeting on Monday, company spokesman Chaz Bickers told The Hill in a statement.

Full title: Boeing has FINALLY completed its software fix for the 737 MAX and insists it will be 'one of the safest ever to fly' following two crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia that killed over 300 -- Boeing says it's completed a software update for its 737 MAX jets, which have been grounded worldwide since March after they were involved in two fatal crashes across a five-month period. (Please see link for full article)

The 737 Max is a flawed design. Instead of building a new plane to meet the needs of a specific market, Boeing’s senior executives made the decision to upgrade the 737 in an attempt to get the plane to market sooner to prevent its largest competitor, Airbus, from securing orders for its own aircraft. When testing revealed that the heavier engines and the forward placement location of the engines on the 737 Max created new and unsafe flight characteristics, did Boeing shut down the program? No. Boeing made the decision to come up with a software fix to force a...

Just months before a second deadly crash of a Boeing 737 Max airplane, American Airlines pilots angrily confronted a Boeing official about a computerized anti-stall system that preliminary reports have now implicated in both deadly wrecks, audio obtained by CBS News reveals. On the audio, a Boeing official is heard telling pilots that software changes were coming, perhaps in as little as six weeks, but that the company didn't want to hurry the process. The pilots indicated they weren't aware of the 737 Max's computerized stability program -- the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS. "We flat out deserve to...