Boeing resumes 787 testing (but not, it appears, continuous airborne tests)

Boeing issued the following press release on Christmas Eve Eve. A careful reading of the press release makes it apparent that actual continuous airborne flight testing is not yet ready to resume. This is a one-off flight test…. Read More

Senate hearing in tanker snafu appropriate

US Sen. Carl Levin announced yesterday that he will hold a hearing by Feb. 1 into the snafu by the USAF over sending Boeing and EADS information about each other’s KC-X tanker submission. We think this is appropriate,… Read More

Odds and ends: Airbus/EADS and Boeing

With Christmas around the corner, here are some year-end thoughts, absent any breaking news of some kind in the week ahead: 737 upgrade: Southwest Airlines continues to pressure Boeing to do something about a more fuel efficient airplane,… Read More

Production boosts at Boeing: more to come for 737

Boeing’s announcement today that it will boost production of the 777 from the previously announced 7/mo to 8.3/mo (100 a year) is good news for Boeing, its customers, the supply chain and (to be parochial about it) Washington… Read More

787 in bigger trouble than thought: Seattle Times

Update, December 21: Flightblogger’s piece (referred to in the Dec. 19 update below) is now up: The price of the 787 sales success. Original Post: Dominic Gates published this story for the Sunday Seattle Times; it’s not good… Read More

Looking at Boeing in 2011

The Everett (WA) Herald has a good series of articles on Boeing’s outlook in 2011. Start here. Be sure to scroll all the way down to the end of the story; there are six other related links. There… Read More

Inslee tanker amendment dropped for DOD Reauthorization

Update, 10:30 AM PST: We have now confirmed that the House leadership has dropped the Inslee Amendment from the Defense Reauthorization Act that will be sent to the Senate. We also received confirmation this morning from Inslee’s office… Read More

Outsourcing US Defense

As regular readers know, a major piece of controversy over the prospect of awarding the KC-X contract to EADS North America is the assertion that this will outsource US defense procurement to a foreign company. We’ve noted in… Read More

737NG vs A320neo: an interesting chess game

Update, Dec. 13: FlightGlobal has this interview with Ryanair and its critique of the NEO. Original Post: The (London) Financial Times has this interview with Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Jim Albaugh in which he says there is no… Read More

Lessors, banks in blistering critique of Airbus NEO

Our colleagues at Commercial Aviation Online put together the story below on lessor and banker reaction to the Airbus A320neo announcement December 1. We knew–and previously referenced here–reluctance on the part of these groups to the NEO concept,… Read More