NTSB issues report of Southwest Airlines fuselage tear incident; and other stuff

The National Transportation Safety Board issued its report of the 2011 in-flight fuselage rip in a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-300. The flight made an emergency descent and landing at Yuma (AZ).

In other stuff:

  • CSeries Report: Bloomberg News has this video report interview with Bombardier’s Rob Dewar, who is in charge of the CSeries development.
  • Airbus: John Leahy is also interview by Bloomberg video, and offers a variety of views on traffic, the duopoly and emerging competitors. Note that Leahy makes a passing reference to the entry-into-service of the A350-900 at the “end” of 2014. This compares with information in the Ascend data base that the first delivery is scheduled for July 2014. In our post of EIS dates, we have the EIS in early 2015. It won’t take much for the EIS to slip from the end of next year to early the following year.
  • Gut bomb: We got such a kick out of this story that we had to include it. It’s about the Cinnabon, and it’s pure decadence.

17 Comments on “NTSB issues report of Southwest Airlines fuselage tear incident; and other stuff

  1. Louis CK has a brilliant comedy bit on Cinnabon, I’d post it here but IIRC it’s kind of lewd; you can find it on youtube though.

    • Second half of 2014, which can be anything between July and the end of December.

      The fly test campaign should end in July 2014. Add another month for the certification paper work (August) and at least another month to prepare the first delivery to Qatar (September). However, MSN6 won’t roll off the assembly line before June 2014, making it nearly impossible for a September delivery. I think a delivery in Q4 2014 is more likely.

    • This is the (at least) second time bad press is brushed aside by exuberant but false “$xyz airline orders substantial batches of Dreamliners” reports.
      NTSB battery report was neutralised by “Air Berlin orders more Dreamliners”.
      ( they contemplated swapping their -8 order to much later -9 deliveries)
      LOT and DY in the press for inoperative 787 and compensation for same is met with “VietAir buys another 19 Dreamliners from Boeing”. ( VietAir seems to have decided engine selection for an existing order only.)

  2. Fortunately Boeing can tolerate a certain amount of failure, because the pay off is there and the 787 is innovative. McNenrney explains his thinking on this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6T9k6D1X-UM

    One of the mysteries to me is how he successfully defended his seat. I think in any European country he would make 5 times less & would have been forced to leave his post years ago,

    • At 34 sec people start to laugh..

      Truly sad performance, man up and just admit it was more about bad strategy that in turn resulted in bad execution. At least Boeing was lucky to have a order book large enough to get all the resources together to fix the mess and make some profit on the long run. But I doubt that the Boeing Dreamliner is the text book example for well executed innovation management.

  3. Boeing is a company in trouble. They have lost the market to a320, the 787 is turning out to be a liablility for the manufacturer and the operator. Surely even the die hard boeing operators will no longer put all their eggs in a single boeing basket.
    Boeing is more concerned with delivery numbers than quality and now the chickens are coming home to roost. Ironically all is bright and shining at airbus.
    They are racking up a320 orders by the hundreds, they have just launched an regional a330 for which boeing has no competing aircraft. So aibus will sell the a330 regional for the next 10 years without competition.
    When the a350 finally enters service, it will surely not have so many problems as the 787 and that will be a selling point that airbus will capitalise on..
    To add insult to injury, norwegian has returned to boeing a brand new aircraft for having too many problems and unacceptable reliablity level.
    If Boeing managers don’t loose sleep over this, then it’s a sure sign that boeing is heading for extinction.

    • IMO, Boeing should just reengine the 777, then build a new 150′ CFRP wing to put on a new aircraft of some sort. That would refragment travel in the 3000 to 5000 nm market, and put the pressure back on the competition.

  4. Posted on an earlier thread, so it may get overlooked, so I’ll try again here – why is Airbus only doing a regional version of the A330-300 and not the -200 as well? The jump from the A321 capacity to the -300 is a big one, I’d have thought that a high capacity -200 would fill the gap. Is it that the -200 is relatively heavier and so less efficient than the -300?

    • Both regional -200 and -300 will have the same range but the -300 will have a lower CASM when you can fill the seats. So airlines will order the -300 anyway, accept the empty seats in the low season and make more money in the high season where you can fill all the seats.

      • The std. A330-300 (going by Airbus seating example and data from the ACAP ) gives you about 18% more capacity for slightly more than 6% increase in empty weight against the A330-200. For homogenous one class commuter seating the difference might be even bigger.

    • A330 “lite” is nothing new. Order a A330. Reduce the MTOW and MLW to get lots of money back from Airbus. Maybe use lighter wheels, tires, and brakes. Order derated engines and get money back from the engine maker as well. Reduce lavs and galleys because no one will be on board for very long. Pack in lots of seats at 30-inch pitch and maybe god forbid 9 abr instead of 8 abr.

      Congratulations Airbus. You just reinvented the A330’s version of Japan Air Lines’ original 747SR. Suddenly it’s 1970. Or Air Inter’s version of the A300? 1975?

      [JAL also had a domestic version of the DC-10-40 with 10-abr seats. Ouch]

  5. If Boeing managers don’t loose sleep over this, then it’s a sure sign that Boeing is heading for extinction.”

    At what point must we laugh?

    The A330 R launched … But where are the customers?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *