Boeing to Temporarily Shut Down 737 Max Production

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times



Boeing has decided to bring the production of its 737 Max to a temporary halt in January as it continues to grapple with fallout from two deadly crashes that have left the jet grounded for nine months, according to two people briefed on the decision.

Boeing is America’s largest manufacturing exporter and the largest component of the Dow Jones industrial average, and its decision to halt production is likely to send shocks through the American economy. It will affect suppliers around the country and plunge the company deeper into crisis.

The 737 Max, which is produced in Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., is the company’s most important aircraft, representing tens of billions of dollars in annual sales. Yet with the company still unable to win approval from global regulators to let the plane fly again, executives and board members have made, in halting production, one of the most consequential decisions in the manufacturer’s more than 100-year history.

Boeing intends to redeploy the workers building the Max to other projects, avoiding layoffs or furloughs for the time being, said the people, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal company decisions.Boeing will try to manage the disruption to suppliers. It may continue to accept parts from major suppliers, so that when the company restarts the Max line, those contractors are able to quickly ramp up production. Others are likely to endure significant financial pain if Boeing’s shutdown halts part of their assembly line for a period of months.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/16/business/boeing-737-max.html

[turbinetree]

1. Spirt Aviation in Kansas is going to be hit hard with this........................there will be

lay-offs.............................

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Yeah - the 737 became like the public transit bus of the skies

once Boeing absorbed McDonnell Douglas (although Airbus has picked up quite a bit of that market and will probably do even more now).

[dem4decades]

2. Boeing should have redesigned a new aircraft. They took the cheap way out

And now everyone will pay. Hopefully no one else will pay with their life.

[turbinetree]

7. I think from personal experience working on that particular model aircraft for over 25 years

it is the most safest plane flying. I personally would get on that plane now....................

Most people do not think of the fact that the pilots that were in command of those aircraft did not know what the stab trim operation is used for or for that matter how to cut off the system, and they did not even see or look at the instrument panel in front of them (PFD) to show that the AOA had failed on the PFD, while taxing, Lion Air.........................and that the maintenance crews did not do their job properly..........like jacking up the aircraft and performing a "Weight off Wheels" test or WOW.
Lion Air pilots.......they just took off................and realized at 3,000 feet they had oh sh*t moment...............

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/black-box-data-reveals-lion-air-pilots-struggle-against-boeings-737-max-flight-control-system/

-snip-

"A key instrument reading on Lion Air flight JT610 was faulty even as the pilots taxied out for takeoff. "


Lemme;

In his view, it wasn’t a case of Boeing’s design engineers ignoring the consequences of a single sensor failure. “It’s a case of overvaluing the pilots’ response.”

"The data confirms that a sensor that measures the plane’s angle of attack, the angle between the wings and the air flow, was feeding a faulty reading to the flight computer. The two angle-of-attack sensors on either side of the jet’s nose differed by about 20 degrees in their measurements even during the ground taxi phase when the plane’s pitch was level. One of those readings was clearly completely wrong."


I realize that I have cherry-picked the article, but.........................Boeing took a proven design.......................just like every manufacturer does today, from cars to boats and even buildings............................the space shuttle was grounded for over three years (Challenger) and two years respectively (Colombia) and it took off again.....................it was proven design, a very dangerous one........................

But if you have a fault on the Lion Air PFD and did nothing........................that is hard fault.....................

[CentralMass]

8. The bottom line is Boeing f'd up..

[turbinetree]

9. The bottom line is that everyone f**ked up.........................literally

[CentralMass]

10. It was the companies responsibilty to produce a safe reliable aircraft.

.if it required proper and adequate pilot training or retraining, it was Boeings responsbility to insure that it happened and that a $100 million aircraft they are selling is safe to fly. It is unfortunate that the culture of the company allowed this to happen.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-implicated-in-the-lion-air-crash/

[VMA131Marine]

12. I fully agree

Remember that the MCAS system, which was instrumental in both crash sequences, was installed to make flying the MAX feel enough like flying the 737NG that pilot recertification was not required. MCAS was effectively band-aids on band-aids. It’s also been discovered that the NG aircraft are likely to have the same difficulties retrimming manually as the MAX. A clean sheet design would never have been configured the way the MAX was.

I’ll point out that the two MAX crashes killed a lot more people than the previous example of a jet aircraft that went into service with a major design flaw: the deHavilland Comet. The Comet did not return to service until after a major redesign, which is probably not possible with the MAX.

[CentralMass]

13. ++

[Maxheader]

15. Worked on the flat bulkhead program at spirit...-900

New Gen....
Going from a dome to flat..I asked the question why? Doesn't really free up any room...Turns out the loads from the verticle fin were causing some structural fatigue problems...in the load pathes going to the domed bulkhead..I'd heard that during flight there can be as much as 5 - 600 psi on those control surfaces...and stress cracks were showing up..Never heard if the program was successful or not...

[stlstdg]

11. Lion Air and Ethiopian have operated 737s (prior to the MAX) for years

Lion Air doesn't have the greatest reputation for safety, but Ethiopian is a highly respected
carrier. Both have operated B737s for years, prior to the MAX and the MCAS.

System redundancy, designing an aircraft so that the failure of one system cannot cause
catastrophic flight envelope issues, has been baked into the cake of airliner design for decades;
it's the holy grail--or it was until the MAX.

It's unthinkable and unconscionable that Boeing would permit a single angle of attack vane to
determine whether MCAS would intervene and "correct" the plane's angle of pitch. Even more
unthinkable and unconscionable that it didn't even inform pilots of the existence if the system.
Mind boggling.

To say (and I know you were just citing a quote) that the engineers ignoring a basic principle of safe
airline design is not a factor in this, but their "overvaluing the pilots' response" is, sounds like lawyerly,
media relations department gobbledygook.

There were no such problems with the previous versions of the 737s (ones without the MCAS system),
that both airlines have operated for a long time.

Boeing's upper management cut corners, neglected basic due diligence, and dismissed previously communicated
concerns by their own engineers, and by pilots, in the interest of profit, and rushing out something to compete
with Airbus. The consequence was that they killed over 300 people.

I'm an airline and airliner geek, and Boeing has been an icon in the industry forever. But it's about time a gigantic
corporation reaped the consequences of its greed. I feel very sorry for the people, who had nothing to do with what
happened, who are likely to lose their jobs. The galling, disgusting thing is that the people who were truly at fault, who
made the decisions that led to this tragedy, will likely walk away scot free, with golden parachutes, of course.

[Corgigal]

21. Single angle of attack.

I remember when all aircraft’s saving grace, was about redundancy. If this fail, this kicks is.

I think the max should be scrapped permanently.

[marble falls]

4. See what happens when you kill several hundred at a time several times and the whole world is ...

watching?

I'm making book: Someone will sponsor a "Saving American Jobs Bill" to bailout/give welfare to/BoeingCare for Boeing.

Anyone want to bet against it?

[DENVERPOPS]

5. No bets

Trump's Boeing Executive addition to his fine group of grifters will guarantee a bailout..

BTW: Did you see where the U.S. Farmer's aren't believing Trump's statement about the Chinese soon to double their soy bean orders from the amounts they bought in 2017 just prior to his tariff's????? LOL

From the day of his tariffs, the Chinese will NEVER commit to any agreements as long as Trump and Republicans are running things...

Trump's Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross, is one of the greatest and most corrupt grifters of all time.....

[marble falls]

6. Isn't it amazing the number of grifter Secty of Agricultures and Reps on ag committees there's been?

[flotsam]

17. I forgot THAT bastard was still playing

AND I can't understand why? This clown has the longest list of "controversies " I've ever seen in a wiki entry-sample-not comprehensive:

Inconsistency on financial disclosure forms
In February 2019, Ross' financial disclosure was rejected by the United States Office of Government Ethics after he reported that he had sold bank stock in conflict with other disclosures he made.[59][60]

Conflicts of interest from failure to divest
In June 2018, an investigation by Forbes found that Ross, while United States Secretary of Commerce, owned "stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government, a shipping firm tied to Vladimir Putin's inner circle, a Cypriot bank reportedly caught up in the Robert Mueller investigation and a huge player in an industry Ross is now investigating" and that Ross had failed to divest his financial holdings, instead putting them in a trust for his family members, contradicting Ross's written statement in November 2017 that he had divested all his financial holdings.[61] Ross may have broken the law in doing so.[61] These holdings posed a conflict of interest for Ross, as the Trump administration was in a position to affect the value of the holdings.[61]

Ross was confirmed by the Senate in February 2017 and he agreed to sell his stocks before the end of May 2017. In July 2018, it was reported that Ross divested from his stock in Invesco, originally worth between $10 and $50 million, in December 2017. Between the end of May and the sale date in December, the value of Ross's holdings in Invesco increased by between approximately $1.2 million to $6 million, depending on the number of shares he owned, which was not disclosed. Ross said that he "mistakenly believed that all [his] previously held Invesco stock was sold".[62] On July 13, 2018 after he received a letter from the government's top ethics watchdog warning of "potential for a serious criminal violation", Ross announced that he will sell all his remaining stock.[63]

Chevron Corporation meetings
In October 2018, documents showed that Ross had participated in a meeting with executives from Chevron Corporation where they discussed oil and gas developments, tax reform and trade issues. Ross's wife owned a stake in Chevron worth at least $250,000 at the time.[64]

Insider trading allegations
Shorting stocks
While United States Secretary of Commerce, Ross shorted at least five stocks.[65] In June 2018, it was revealed that Ross shorted stock after he knew of an upcoming report with information that would adversely affect the company but before the story was published. Ross later sold the position at a substantial profit after the story was published.[61][66] Ethics experts said that the shorting was alarming given that federal office-holders are prohibited from profiting on nonpublic information.[66] Ross denied that he had engaged in insider trading.[67] Ross had shorted two additional stocks in June 2018 and two additional stocks in July 2018.[65]

Bank of Ireland
In December 2017, Irish politician and Member of the European Parliament Luke Ming Flanagan accused Ross of insider trading as part of a 2014 sale of shares in the Bank of Ireland by WL Ross & Co.[68]

For more go here to section 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Ross

This guy is a crooked train wreck!

[DENVERPOPS]

20. I told you, Ross wrote the book on corruption

(along with Trump) in all their Co-grifting years before Trump even ran for President......
Now they are back together to do a supreme job utilizing and combining their massive grifting talents un-inhibited by any authorities.......

[Voltaire2]

14. Boeing is in serious trouble.

They may have just lost the commercial market entirely to AirBus. I guess now they will have to lean on their MIC ties to bump up the gravy train from tax payers to compensate for their criminal negligence that murdered hundreds of people.

[BumRushDaShow]

16. They do have their eyes on space flight too

Remember hearing about this awhile ago and had lost track until I started hearing news stories last week about Cape Canaveral "being used again".

NASA approves Dec. 20 Starliner test flight
by Jeff Foust — December 12, 2019

WASHINGTON — NASA gave its approval Dec. 12 to proceed with the launch later this month of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner commercial crew spacecraft on an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station. At the end of a Flight Readiness Review at the Kennedy Space Center, NASA officials approved plans to launch the Starliner on its Orbital Flight Test (OFT) mission on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 at 6:36 a.m. Eastern Dec. 20. A launch on that day would result in the spacecraft docking with the ISS a little more than a day later, remaining there for nearly a week before landing at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the predawn hours of Dec. 28.

“I’m happy to announce we’re go for launch,” NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Morhard said in a media teleconference shortly after the review concluded. Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA, said there was still some “standard open work” to complete ahead of that launch, as well as resolve two open issues. “We could move off the 20th, but right now the 20th is looking good,” he said. Those open issues, said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of Boeing’s commercial crew program, include finalizing a review by the ISS program to confirm the Starliner flying on the mission matches the previously approved design, as well as final “data loads” for the spacecraft. Both of those, he said, should be completed before the scheduled Dec. 20 launch.

In the meantime, launch preparations will continue, including a final cargo load into the spacecraft Dec. 14 and rollout of the Atlas 5 with Starliner to the pad at Cape Canaveral’s Launch Complex 41 on Dec. 17. Starliner will be carrying an anthropomorphic test dummy, nicknamed Rosie, that will be instrumented to measure the conditions astronauts will experience on the vehicle. “And, absolutely, as we approach the holidays, we will be bringing presents for the crew,” Mulholland added.

/snip

A successful OFT mission would allow Boeing and NASA to proceed with a crewed flight test with agency astronauts Mike Fincke and Nicole Mann, and Boeing test pilot Chris Ferguson, on board. That mission would be ready to launch in the “first part of 2020,” Mulholland said, but declined to be more specific about a potential launch date. “We’re hesitant right now to set the launch date until we get through a solid Orbital Flight Test and make sure we thoroughly review the data and understand anything we might need to do to support the Crew Flight Test,” he said.


https://spacenews.com/nasa-approves-dec-20-starliner-test-flight/

[flotsam]

18. Did you ever wonder what the crew of the ISS think about untested rockets being sent to them

Because if I'm aboard and have watched multiple test flights fail, perhaps I wonder about docking system designs and near stage software failures while docking...especially when multiple corporations compete. No one would cut corners, right-even if corporate survival was at stake...

[BumRushDaShow]

19. Well right now all they have are the Russian Soyuz ships to ferry the crew

so I expect given the bizarre goings-on between the U.S. and Russia, one of the 3 (SpaceX, Orbital Sciences now owned by Northrup-Grumman who have been in the biz a long time, and Boeing) have to get up and running soon.

[dalton99a]

22. Boeing's cash flow: Negative $2.9 billion last quarter

Boeing already is having cash flow issues. In October, the company reported that free cash flow went from $4.1 billion a year ago to a negative $2.9 billion in the third quarter, worse than analysts had expected.

https://hosted.ap.org/article/3642b635144fa01ba33f3aa1b223c08b/boeing-gets-faa-message-will-halt-max-production-january