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The world's longest and largest twin-engine airliner, the Boeing 777-9X, has finally taken to the skies for its maiden flight, offering a ray of hope for the troubled US aviation company following months of grim headlines. After days of abysmal weather, airplane WH-001 took from Paine Field, home of Boeing's wide-body factory, north of Seattle, on Saturday morning. The flight had been postponed twice earlier in the week because of poor conditions, but as the aircraft taxied past the press viewing area ahead of takeoff, a rainbow appeared -- perhaps offering a positive portent. When the moment did finally arrive,...

On Sunday (Jan. 19), SpaceX's Crew Dragon launched on a brilliant a high-altitude test of its launch escape system. SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk called the in-flight abort test flight "picture perfect," and, in looking at the stunning images of the test, he was absolutely right. Following a weather delay, Crew Dragon lifted off at 10:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT) atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With the test, SpaceX successfully (and intentionally) destroyed one of its Falcon 9 rockets to show that, if there were a launch anomaly,...

The release of a batch of internal messages has raised more questions about the safety of Boeing's 737 Max. In one of the communications, an employee said the plane was "designed by clowns". The planemaker described the communications as "completely unacceptable". The 737 Max was grounded in March 2019 after two fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, which killed almost 350 people in total. Boeing said it had released the hundreds of redacted messages as part of its commitment to transparency. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and US Congress were given unredacted versions of the communications last month. "These communications...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co has released hundreds of internal messages that contained harshly critical comments about the development of the 737 MAX, including one that said the plane was “designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys”. The messages, disclosed on Thursday, show attempts to duck regulatory scrutiny with employees disparaging the plane, the company, the Federal Aviation Administration and foreign aviation regulators. In an instant messaging exchange on Feb. 8, 2018 - when the plane was in the air and eight months before the first of two fatal crashes, an employee asks another: “Would you put...

Europe's Airbus has become the world's biggest plane maker this year as its US rival Boeing struggles to get its bestselling MAX jets back in the skies. Airbus — which has trailed Boeing since 2012 — delivered a record 863 aircraft in 2019, Reuters news agency reported, citing airport and tracking sources. Boeing, on the other hand, had delivered just 345 planes by the end of November and is on course for its worst performance in more than a decade, mainly hurt by the grounding of the MAX aircraft. The US plane maker delivered 806 aircraft in 2018, slightly more...

The plane was grounded worldwide in March after two crashes that killed 346 people. The company determined a software fix was likely to correct the issue with the automatic safety feature that caused the crashes. However, as part of a December audit of the plane’s safety ordered by the US Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing found “previously unreported concerns” with wiring in the 737 Max, according to a report earlier Sunday from the New York Times. The company informed the FAA last month that it is looking into whether two sections of wiring that control the tail of the plane are...

Documents sent to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Thursday by aircraft manufacturer Boeing included conversations between the company's employees who talked about getting the agency to approve the now-beleaguered 737 Max airplanes while concealing problems with the product, The New York Times reports. Many of the messages handed over to the agency included conversations detailing the software and flight simulator problems for the aircrafts that were withheld from the FAA, the newspaper reported. “I still haven’t been forgiven by God for the covering up I did last year,” one of the employees said in documented messages from 2018, referencing their...

Over 50 years after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed the first humans on the Moon, the beleaguered agency can’t even pull off basic landings at the International Space Station (ISS) in Earth’s orbit. On Dec.20, 2019, the agency debuted the delayed, over-budget Starliner capsule for a test-run to and from ISS before being deemed ready for ferrying astronauts. But the Boeing-built aircraft couldn’t even dock in the space station due to a system error, instead pointlessly orbiting Earth before landing in New Mexico on Dec. 22. Taxpayers deserve better than billions of dollars of their hard-earned money...

NEW YORK - Boeing provided a fresh batch of incriminating documents on the 737 MAX to regulators and congressional investigators, only hours after announcing a leadership shakeup, officials confirmed Tuesday. The document dump came just before Christmas, when many officials already are on holiday, and "appear to point to a very disturbing picture" about Boeing's response to safety issues regarding the 737 MAX, a congressional aide told AFP in an email Tuesday. The aide said Boeing sent the documents "late in the evening" Monday to congressional staff investigating the issues with the aircraft, which has been grounded since March following...

Chairman David Calhoun will become the manufacturer’s new CEO on Jan. 13. The transition period will allow him to exit his non-Boeing commitments. Board member Lawrence Kellner will become Boeing’s non-executive chairman of the board, effective immediately. Boeing shares rose 2.5% in morning trading. In addition to the Max problem, Boeing suffered a major embarrassment this weekend with its Starliner space capsule. Its autonomous flight control system fired at the wrong time shortly after launch, putting Starliner in the wrong orbit. A planned docking with the International Space Station to deliver supplies had to be aborted. The craft did safely...

Boeing on Monday fired its chief executive, Dennis A. Muilenburg, whose handling of the company’s 737 Max crisis had angered lawmakers, airlines, regulators and victims’ families. The company said Dave Calhoun, the chairman, would replace Mr. Muilenburg on Jan. 13. Until then, Boeing’s chief financial officer, Greg Smith, will serve as interim chief executive, the company said. The Boeing board made the decision on a call on Sunday, after a string of disastrous announcements for the company, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Muilenburg has stepped down...

A government analysis after the first Boeing 737 MAX crash last fall found the jets were at a significant risk for future crashes, but the agency did not ground the planes until after a second crash. Those two crashes killed 346 people. A Federal Aviation Administration analysis document predicted there would be more than 15 additional fatal crashes of the MAX over its lifetime, and was made public Wednesday at a House Transportation Committee hearing. Administrator Stephen Dickson said that based on that document and "what I know today," he would have acted to ground the plane had he been...

This month’s announcement from Party City that it’s closing more than 40 stores as it grapples with new challenges, including diminishing helium supplies, likely came as unwelcome news to customers who count on the store for their balloon and event planning needs. But for scientists like Mark Elsesser, the announcement was something of a relief, inflating hopes that the public, and the government, might start paying closer attention. “When it comes to helium, we’re at a tipping point,” said Elsesser, who is the associate director of government affairs at the American Physical Society, a nonprofit association of physicists. “Party City...

Tomorrow's cruise ship will sail through the air, not the water By Joshua Tompkins John MacNeill LIFTOFF! On a pressurized plane, windows like these would explode outward . The Aeroscraft does not fly high enough to need pressurization. This is not a Blimp. It's a sort of flying Queen Mary 2 that could change the way you think about air travel. It's the Aeroscraft, and when it's completed, it will ferry pampered passengers across continents and oceans as they stroll leisurely about the one-acre cabin or relax in their well-appointed staterooms. Unlike its dirigible ancestors, the Aeroscraft is not lighter...

The flight that put the Boeing Company on course for disaster lifted off a few hours after sunrise. It was good flying weather—temperatures in the mid-40s with a slight breeze out of the southeast—but oddly, no one knew where the 737 jetliner was headed. The crew had prepared three flight plans: one to Denver. One to Dallas. And one to Chicago. In the plane’s trailing vortices was greater Seattle, where the company’s famed engineering culture had taken root; where the bulk of its 40,000-plus engineers lived and worked; indeed, where the jet itself had been assembled. But it was May...

Foreign-born researchers working at U.S. agencies secretly joined China’s payroll, sending sensitive U.S.-funded research to the country while U.S. government agencies took almost no defensive measures against a major recruitment operation, a Senate investigation found. Researchers linked to the Chinese government formed a Chinese cell within the Department of Energy, attained access to American genomic data, and recruited other U.S. researchers to join, the bipartisan report stated. China’s Thousand Talents Plan (TTP) aims to get foreign governments to finance the communist power’s military and economy by buying off researchers who are doing work abroad. The experts apply to the program,...

Now the capsule will be mated on top of the rocket that will take it to space — an Atlas V manufactured by the United Launch Alliance. On December 17th, the rocket and capsule are slated to take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida — without any crew members on board — and then dock with the International Space Station. If successful, this demonstration mission could pave the way for NASA astronauts to fly on the Starliner sometime next year. Boeing has been developing the Starliner spacecraft for NASA as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew program, an initiative to...

Full Title: President Putin says five men killed in huge explosion in northern Russia that caused sudden radiation spike died trying to create a weapon that ‘has no equal in the world’ Russian President Vladimir Putin has told widows of the five scientists who died in a nuclear explosion earlier this year that their husbands were working on 'the most advanced and unmatched technical' weaponry. Putin's comments came during a ceremony of state decorations at the Kremlin today where he awarded the deceased employees of Russia's state nuclear company with the Order of Courage, posthumously.

From sloppy work to blown deadlines to deadly failures, the company has lost its way. It needs tough love — in the form of Congressional investigations.... Taken together, the problems with the 737 MAX, the 787 Dreamliner, the KC-46 Pegasus, the NASA Starliner, and the Space Launch System suggest systemic organizational and cultural failures that the company, unaided, appears incapable of solving... The deadly failures in the 737 MAX program alone suggest major cultural and organizational problems at the company. Though the loss of almost 350 passengers in two crashes have prompted internal investigations, media scrutiny, and an admission by...

A Boeing whistleblower has claimed that passengers on its 787 Dreamliner could be left without oxygen if the cabin were to suffer a sudden decompression. John Barnett says tests suggest up to a quarter of the oxygen systems could be faulty and might not work when needed. He also claimed faulty parts were deliberately fitted to planes on the production line at one Boeing factory. Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in...