Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
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- Solid start for stand-alone GE Aerospace despite cuts to LEAP output April 23, 2024
- SPEEA, Boeing at impasse over safety program, union says April 23, 2024
- Better transparency needed on Boeing’s 1Q earnings call April 22, 2024
Boeing SC construction underway for second 787 final assembly line
An Etihad Airlines Boeing 787 undergoing modification for a production issue at the Boeing South Carolina final assembly plant. This rework will shift to Everett exclusively so this rework space can be shifted to a second Final Assembly Line. Credit: Leeham News.
By Scott Hamilton
May 31, 2023, © Leeham News: Charleston (SC)—Boeing is gearing up to add a second production line for the 787 here at what was once the second line to the Everett (WA) plant.
When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, the Everett line was closed and production was consolidated here. Peak production between the two plants was 14/mo, with seven at each facility. Even before the pandemic, the rate was trimmed to 12/mo. With the pandemic, and airlines refusing to take any airplanes of any times as passenger traffic all but disappeared, production was slashed to 3/mo.
Then, when a production quality issue was discovered, deliveries were halt and production was slashed again, to a mere one-half 787 per month.
Deliveries restarted last year and the production rate returned to 3/mo. At a media briefing yesterday, In advance of the Paris Air Show, the VP and GM of the 787 program, Lane Ballard, announced the rate is going to 4/mo. By year end, Boeing will boost the rate to 5/mo. Boeing previously announced plans to boost the rate to 10/mo by 2025.
In a tour of the production line, the media saw early construction of a second assembly line in the 787 plant as Boeing prepares to add a second line for that previously announced 10 airplane per month, up from a peak of seven. But the Charleston plant has room for more than 10 airplanes per month.
Fuselage capacity is already 14/mo
Charleston from inception of the 787 program produces the aft Sections 47 and 48 for the 787. Section 48 is the last section of the fuselage. Section 47 is immediately before Section 48 and before the mid-section of the airplane. All these sections, for Everett and later Line 2 in Charleston, come from Charleston. Thus, the capacity for these sections is 14 per month.
But the final assembly line at Charleston peaked at 7/mo, the same As Everett. However, the 787-10—the longest of the three member family—is assembled only in Charleston because the joined aft sections are too big to airlift to Everett for final assembly.
With hundreds of new 787 orders received this year and more likely to come in the near- and mid-future, Charleston needs more final assembly capacity. Boeing officials declined to say what the current FAL building can assemble.
But in November 2020, LNA analyzed the Charleston production capacity and concluded that as the facility existed then (and today), it has the capacity to produce 12.5 787s per month based on then-existing labor and production metrics.
Officials did say that they are implementing lean production techniques. LNA believes that Charleston may be able to increase the throughput to 14 per month once more efficiencies are achieved.
Shifting work to Everett
Although Everett lost the first 787 FAL, the former space at the big Everett production plant is engaged in reworking quality issues and more importantly, fixing a production flaw discovered more than two years ago. Deliveries were halted to deal with microscopic gaps at body joins and elsewhere. An inventory of 787s that were built had to be inspected and fixes undertaken. At the peak, 110 787s were parked around Charleston and, later, Everett and Victorville (CA). This inventory has been reduced to about 90 aircraft. Everett is already doing some of the rework, as is Charleston.
Officials said that all this rework will shift to Everett to be completed by the end of 2024. This will free space in Charleston to construct the second final assembly line.
What will Boeing do with the Everett 787 space when the rework is done? No announcement has been made about its future.
“Lane Ballard, announced the rate is going to 4/mo. By year end, Boeing will boost the rate to 5/mo. Boeing previously announced plans to boost the rate to 10/mo by 2025.”
The 10/mo. was announced 6 months ago during its Investors Conference in Renton.
Early in 2021 Calhoun said : “However, it will be back-end loaded with no delivery this month and most likely very few, if any, in February. Also, based on what we know today, we still expect to deliver the vast majority of the 787 aircraft inventory by the end of the year,” commented Calhoun.
Half ’23 there are still 90 in storage.
Boeing might consider communicating a bit more careful and realistic, because people don’t know what to believe anymore.
a second production line seems positive news, maybe de-risking the FAL a bit too.
Seven months left in the year ~13 a month from inventory plus another 4 from the line gives us 17 deliveries per month.
Mind you, Planespotters has them getting 10 out the door in May, after delivering 9 in April.
——————————————————-
Of note, one of the ten in May is this one
https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-787-8-ey-001-republic-of-tajikistan/roxoo0
13 years old, line #6 – a BA testbed aircraft. Was an aircraft in the Mexican Air Force
——————————————————-
KLM took this one – 2.8 years old, the oldest from Inventory.
https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-787-10-ph-bki-klm-royal-dutch-airlines/r7w259
——————————————————-
It’s looks like three were delivered off of the line in May. The rest were from Inventory.
——————————————————————
In April, there were three 787’s delivered to Norse Atlantic Airways. All were old Norwegian red nose aircraft, 4-5 years old.
———————————————————————
Zipair of Japan took line #38, an old JAL jet over 11 years old:
https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-787-8-ja827j-zipair-tokyo/3805kz
———————————————————————
Of the five left, 3 were from Inventory and 2 were from the line.
April – 3 from the line, 6 from Inventory
May – 2 from the line, 3 from Inventory.
They’ve got a long way to go to get to 4 from the line and 13 from Inventory.
And they have low-to-zero (or even negative) margins on the units coming from inventory — so everything revolves around the ones coming from the line (although they were also probably sold for over-discounted prices…).
Hello Frank,
Re: “Of note, one of the ten in May is this one
https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-787-8-ey-001-republic-of-tajikistan/roxoo0
13 years old, line #6 – a BA testbed aircraft. Was an aircraft in the Mexican Air Force”
This aircraft was owned by Mexico since 2014 and recently sold by Mexico to Tajikistan. This was a sale of a used aircraft from Mexico to Tajikistan in which Boeing was not involved. This aircraft was purchased by the Mexican government for use as a presidential plane and owned by them since 2014, until being sold in April of this year to Tajikistan by the current Mexican president, who had made a campaign promise to get rid of what he considered to be an unjustifiable luxury. See the excerpt below from the May 15, 2023 New York Times article at the link after the excerpt.
“A plane that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president of Mexico, once described as an “insult to the people” arrived in Tajikistan on Monday, he said, completing the sale of the jet to that country’s government and delivering on a campaign promise to do away with it.
Since he was elected in 2018, Mr. López Obrador, known as AMLO, has struggled to find a buyer for the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which was ordered by former President Felipe Calderón and used by his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto.
“I don’t know why they bought such a large plane,” Mr. López Obrador said in Spanish at a news conference on Monday.
Over the years, Mr. López Obrador said he had offered to sell it to former President Donald J. Trump, President Biden and Vice President Harris. At one point, Mr. López Obrador tried to raffle off the plane, which came with many amenities, including a treadmill.
“We couldn’t sell it because of the luxury of the plane,” Mr. López Obrador said.
Ultimately, the government of Tajikistan bought the jet for $92 million, or about 1.6 billion Mexican pesos. The sale was announced by the Mexican government last month. The plane then needed to be prepared for the government of Tajikistan. It’s unclear how much was spent on refurbishing it.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/world/americas/mexico-obrador-presidential-plane-tajikistan.html
Hello Frank,
Re:”Zipair of Japan took line #38, an old JAL jet over 11 years old:
https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-787-8-ja827j-zipair-tokyo/3805kz”
This was neither a sale by Boeing nor a delivery from the Boeing factory. This aircraft was delivered by Boeing to JAL in 2012. Zipair is a wholly owned subsidiary of JAL and its fleet consists, according to Wikipedia, entirely of Boeing 787’s leased from JAL. In all likelihood this was a delivery from JAL to Zipair of another 787 that JAL has leased to Zipair.
“Zipair, officially Zipair Tokyo Inc., … is a Japanese low-cost airline headquartered on the grounds of Tokyo Narita Airport. Initially founded in 2018, the airline is a wholly owned subsidiary of Japan Airlines, from which it leases its fleet of Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipair_Tokyo
@ AP-Robert / Frank
@Frank evidently doesn’t have the experience with Planespotters that I do 😉
For some quirky reason, Planespotters likes to list re-deliveries along with new deliveries. These can easily be weeded out by looking for very old LNs and then removing them from consideration. For May, there were 2 of these quirks (LN 6 and LN 827), leaving 9 actual deliveries. As Frank correctly pointed out, most of these were from inventory, and only 3 were new from the line (LN 1135, 1142, 1149).
Hey Bryce & Robert
I thought it was evident when I gave the final numbers at the end that I backed out all those aircraft from their delivery figures. I posted those aircraft to point out old aircraft (the Mexico aircraft, 3 rednoses, and the JAL) as aircraft that they are not getting revenue for.
If you’re just breaking my balls, then OK…. 🙂
@ Frank
It was perfectly evident to me. But save yourself some flak the next time and weed out the junk beforehand: remember that the BA Back Office is primed to pounce on any flaw from the side of the financial realists 😉
AP is just being pedantic…he tends to be like that. The man has great patience, God bless him 🙂
The FAA still has to decide how in-service 787s are to be checked/repaired for the various manufacturing flaws to which the article alludes.
Perhaps Everett will also be doing those in-service planes that fail inspection and are judged to require stripping and re-work?
From the first link:
“That’s a determination that has to be made with the FAA, and most of this in light of the fact that the safety margins on the structural elements of our airplanes is huge. So, it’s not the world’s easiest set of analyses to go through and our teams have taken their shot at it. They go through the FAA in great detail. And so, I don’t really know the answer to that,” Calhoun said, responding to an analyst question about whether a retrofit will be necessary for in-service 787s. “But the ideal for all of us is to just incorporate it into ongoing maintenance schedules of the airlines. So that is that’s our hope and desire and sort of anyway, but I’m going to leave it to the FAA and our ultimate conclusions between those two teams as to just what happens on that front.”
From the second link:
“Those planes currently in service can be inspected and reworked later during routine maintenance, the spokesperson said.
However, complicating the process, the FAA memo states that Boeing doesn’t have the detailed configuration data on each plane to know which may have the defects.”
https://www.aviationtoday.com/2021/07/29/boeing-awaits-faa-decision-requirements-service-787s/
https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2021/11/20/faa-memo-reveals-more-boeing-787-manufacturing-defects-including-contamination-of-carbon-fiber-composites/
For those that do not follow this in detail, to avoid a spiral down incorrect facts.
If its a flight safety issue (the airplane can break) then aircraft are grounded or a determination is they need to have the problem fixed in so many cycles or hours of operation.
Also, building to production spec as is certified, vs a problem found latter are not the same thing. Once flying the safety of flight tag applies, but any aircraft that is being mfg has to meet the full on certification spec.
In the case of the 787, out of round and a shim issue had to combine to be a flight safety issue and either one was out of spec, so the FAA halted deliveries until Boeing came up with procedure to address it at the factory.
I believe 10 aircraft had been delivered that had both issues and required a fix immediately. Obviously it was a bit longer safety of flgiht issue but not to be messed around with and that work was done.
The correction of a single out of spec issue is still being looked at and determined when that will be corrected.
Evertts work is the 787s that were built in Charleston that the FAA would not certify as they had one or the other spec out of tolerance and it did not matter if it had both, the FAA is signing off on each hull for delivery certification for now and those aircraft did not meet the mfg spec.
You saw the same thing play out with the Vertical Stab bracker issue on the 737. It was deemed not a flgihyt safety issue but it was out of spec and a possible future issue.
Those are being inspected and as long as no issues, they will just be tracked. If they get cracks then the FAA takes that data and mandates a shop visit before other aircraft reach that limit (they will use some margin).
The 777 horizontal stab has an issue that goes back to the original builds, they are now mandating an inspection and will mandate a continued inspection.
That may or may not require a fix.
If Hawaiian air had done their inspections correctly, they would have caught exactly what Boeing was telling them would occurred and where it would occur and that blow out would not have occurred.
Yes, TW — we remember your recent wing join fantasy, and also your recent fantasy in which you told us that the vertical stabilizer issue in in-service 737s would only need to be addressed if cracks were found…
You really should try to post some links to back up your points: if nothing else, it helps weed out fantasies before they get larger than life 😉
Yah, I got a smile out “..spiral down incorrect facts” from that source.
I almost read it as sarcasm. 🙂
“If Hawaiian air had done their inspections correctly, they would have caught exactly what Boeing was telling them would occurred ”
And the Southwest fuselage ‘bursts’ on the lowers hours 737-300 2 years apart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_812
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_2294
The likely outcome is that the in-service 787 mitigations will take place at major aircraft maintenance checks, when the aircraft are out of service for an extended period anyway. Since there is no safety issue involved.
It might even be that the Everett line will swing into some of that work at the conclusion of the stored aircraft mitigations.
Seeing as BA will be footing the (sizable) bill for any repair work that needs to be done, it’s not inconceivable that the frames in question will be flown to Everett to be processed — which would be more efficient and cost-effective.
Of course, if inspection is performed during a heavy maintenance check, it will have to be done pretty early in the process, so that the plane will still be able to fly to Everett if necessary.
@ Claes makes a very interesting point below about scrapping as opposed to repair.
Yes, that’s an alternate solution, just reduce the fatigue life rating and offer new aircraft at a discount, taking the older aircraft in trade. Those could then be parted out or repaired, at Boeing’s discretion.
I suspect they will try to repair them, but we just have to wait and see what happens
Re – the last sentence of the article:
I thought the plan was to use the 787 Everett FAL space for the new 737 FAL. Then the 787 rework would have moved into the gap left by the 747 line.
Maybe they’re moving the new 737 FAL into the old 747 line?
737 is going into the 747 space
Thank you
767 tanker and 787 rework is going and already where the 747 was.
And more 787 rework will transition from the old 787 mainline as the 737 North line comes online next year.
The 40-21 bay was cleaned out and is being used for 737 rework for a bit. The vertical fin rework.
I think the Everett site now does more rework than manufacturing. And it’s becoming a problem as new hires are learning how to do rework not build airplanes.
How the current non-leadership team sees things and how we understood directions and possibilities 20 years ago are very far apart.
If certain conditions are met, including:
– A highly engaged and motivated workforce.
– Full implementation of the lean assembly system developed in Renton.
– Full transition to the 20xx family of commercial planes except for any aluminum fuse lines required for military applications.
Then the entire large transport aircraft assembly needs of the entire company, could easily fit into the Everett site. The two big items that would still be spread out a bit from there are painting and delivery.
The single biggest challenge with the Everett site is moving people in and out of it.
As far as BSC is concerned, while over time the workforce there will eventually develop the skills to do competent assembly work if the leadership cultural issues are fixed, they have two larger challenges that will be significantly more difficult to address. One is the lack of proximity to design engineering, not that any new planes are coming along that will need that. The other is environmental exposure due to climate change issues. They already lose several days of production due to climate change each year.
On the climate issue set, perhaps the single biggest issue with public policy and business leadership is simply an inability to understand the language of science and math. It is a simple reality that any time any system (e.g. biological, mechanical, organizational, or whatever kind of system you want to name) changes from one range of relative stability to another, the process of change is nonlinear. The IPCC reports have been saying that quite explicitly for over two decades.
That should scare the hell out of people, but the reality is that a lack of understanding of the language and its meaning has gotten in the way of that awareness, and rational response. Instead, the political process that funds and approves the IPCC work and reporting has required their periodic reports to put in these totally fictitious projections for things like sea level rise, which is impossible to predict because of the nonlinear behavior of the variables. The reports say that, but those footnotes get ignored because people don’t know what the word nonlinear means or how to apply it in a given situation.
Assuming that Boeing long survives, which is seriously in doubt at this point, this is one of those things (i.e. excessive investment in the BSC site) that is self correcting, albeit in a very costly way.
The state of science and math education, and by that I mean the most basic literacy of the basic concepts and language, of the general public is perhaps the single biggest problem humans face. Everyone should read John Allen Paulos’s 1989 book “Innumeracy.” https://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809074478/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
So this is a reply to an article on a financial website. Here is the article
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4606014-avoid-boeing-stock-fools-gold
And the (longish) comment
It’s a fairly good article, but there are three relevant points that I think are either missing, or had their emphasis on the wrong attribute.
First, in any business, the core activity depends on the skill and experience of the team doing the work. That includes leadership and the hands-on doers. In aerospace (commercial and defense programs), if yo don’t do something for 20 years or so, then you simply have lost the ability to do whatever that was. One of the items that Boeing no longer has the talent base (leadership and hands-on) to be able to do is design and produce a new airplane. The current team has exactly zero experience doing that.
In terms of continuing to perform on whatever parts of a business still exist after some core has been lost, much depends on employee attitudes about their work. The working culture is a product of whatever example leadership decides to set by its own actions. Many Boeing people who live north of the Everett plant actively try to get work assignments at the Renton plant, adding a horrific drive to their commutes. This is blamed on the awful working conditions in the Everett plant, which was once considered to be the finest industrial facility in the United States, and was routinely featured in publications such as the National Geographic. That says something about the company’s leadership team.
Finally, when you decapitalize a business and walk away from some capability it once had, the cost of recapitalizing it and getting that capability back will always be many times what was pulled out. This is because of what happens to the normal distribution curve of the talent pool that is left behind. It shifts to the left. Moving your normal distribution curve of employee talent back to the right is incredibly difficult, and requires as much luck as it does recruiting skill. And your resulting labor costs will be much higher than what they would have been if the rebuilding effort had been avoided. I’m not saying that Boeing’s employee talent base cannot be rebuilt, but the cost of doing so is staggering, and getting much larger with every passing day. That cost is clearly already well beyond what normal financial markets can provide, and well into the range of the kind of capital that can only come from governments or central banks. In short, without a government takeover along the lines of the GM deal in 2009, Boeing will never build another new plane. It doesn’t have the human capital required to do that, and it has no access to the financial capital required to acquire that human capital. That dearth of human capital is spread across leadership and hands-on.
At this point, Boeing is just another International Harvester – a once great American industrial enterprise that was managed into the ground. RIP Boeing.
And he goes on:
Adam, the problem with morale in Everett is actually not the loss of work. For example, the 787 rework line has plenty, 777 is full, and the 767 line is finally getting straightened out (physical layout, not managerial). The problem is management philosophy and skill, which can be summed in two ways. One is the old joke that the beatings will continue until morale improves, and the other is that there is an attitude that work is class driven, and that management personnel are a higher class of humans, and that the lower classes deserve less respect. They have reverted to attitudes of the old South or feudal Europe.
Second, and perhaps more important starts with the reality that to most of the world the first thing that comes to mind when they think of Boeing are the commercial airplanes. But, that was always a secondary line of business in terms of both profits and skills distribution. The engineering workforce on the defense side was higher paid and backed up commercial. Well, the very first thing that Stonecipher made war on after the merger, was the defense engineering workforce, starting with the former North American Aviation (Rockwell). The LA Times did an extensive series on this after the second shuttle disaster and blamed it completely on the loss of skill in that part of the company.
If anything, the reduction in engineering talent on the defense side has been far worse than it has been on the commercial side, and that applies to So-Cal, Puget Sound, St. Louis, Houston, San Antonio (it’s horrible down there), and the Cape.
This is one of the areas where human weakness in everyday math is a fairly serious problem. I personally blame the math teachers, because the teach the stuff that they like, not what people need. When was the last time you used your 10th grade geometry to calculate the volume of liquid in a partially filled cylinder that is leaning? We all spent most of a year building the skills to be able to do that, and it or a related problem was on the standardized tests we took. But the stuff we use multiple times per day, such as dealing with probability, large numbers, random effects, and normal distribution curves got scant attention. Thus, we have a public that can’t deal with topics like the importance of immunization, a supreme court that doesn’t understand the validity of random sampling, and financial analysts that don’t understand the limits of accounting or anything else that drives the intangible factors in stock valuation.
There is zero difference between the average math awareness of the customers sitting at the slot machines in a casino and anyone who is long on stocks like Boeing’s. The fountains in front of the Bellagio and Boeing’s stock price are driven by the same logical fallacies.
Frank:
I used Algebra a lot in my work from the 80s on, but I did not need to know the 11 laws of philosophy regarding it. What is needed is practical math and then onto more in depth if you need it. I disagree on geometry as that is useful, Trig and Calculus were options.
” But, that was always a secondary line of business in terms of both profits and skills distribution.”
I do disagree with the statement that defense is Boeing, that would only be a consideration post the MD takeover and its not most of Boeing, as I recall its about 40%. WWII being the exception and maybe the heavy building period of the B-47 and B-52.
@ Frank
Here’s a better one for you: although the degeneration in math acumen is noticeably hurting society, a widespread and accelerating deterioration in linguistic skills is having a far bigger impact!
A frightening percentage of people — particularly from among the younger generations — has seriously sub-standard reading comprehension / communication skills … to an extent that is substantially impeding effective participation in normal, everyday activities.
The FAA might just set a new life limit on those fuselages besides repetitive inspection requirements and Boeing giving a good trade in value for purchase of a new unit from new production for those accepting Charleston built 787’s.
No, if its an issue they will fix the fuselage at a heavy inspection or sooner if the FAA deems it a problem.
Unless fixing the issue costs too much, when considered as part of a cost-benefit analysis…that’s the point that @ Claes was making.
@ Claes
Your comment reminds me of those young, leased 787s that were recently scrapped. The reason? They were stored in wet conditions (Prestwick) during the CoViD downturn, and their physical condition suffered to such an extent that scrapping and parting-out was considered to be more viable than repair and re-leasing. In that regard, who’ll want to pay for doing “open heart surgery” on an older 787 (BA will be footing the bill, of course)? Scrapping and giving a sharp discount on a new frame may be a cheaper alternative.
Yes, strange that the “all composite 787” suffer from long time parking in moist conditions. The AMM covers this but there is always a risk of confusion who should do the preservation and periodic checking of the aircraft, still there is always an owner that should check it is being done “by the book”. Wonder if the USAF/USN that is used to long term parking of composite aircrafts (F-35/F-22) has the same problems?
“What will Boeing do with the Everett 787 space when the rework is done? No announcement has been made about its future.”
BCA has already announced a 737 North line where the 787 rework is done. And actually have already started shifting the 787 rework to other areas of the Everett factory.
When the 787 rework is completely done it’ll free up more space to rework the 20 777Xs parked around Pain Field in Everett.
Drew:
Do we know the 777X needs re-work or has Boeing fixed the issues and they just need a run through and final testing before delivery to a customer?
As I understand it there were two real issues with the 777X. One was the blow out and I would assume they have resolved that.
The other was flight control software (copy and paste from a 787) and one handling issue that had it take a dive it should not have. But again those would be issues being worked on and new software loaded.
The other seems to be process problems with Boeing support documentation.
Yes we know the already built 777Xs need a lot of rework. None is what you’ve mentioned either.
777X C&I, change and incorp will be going on for years.
I wonder if Boing has any aircraft programs that are not undergoing re-work.
#winning
That’s a very relevant and interesting question…
Keeps BA employees busy.👍
They need rework after certification, yes, which is normal. They are also in various stages of completion, so they need to be finished. But there are relatively few, and they will be worked back into the production flow.
TW.
All 777Xs built in advance of the certification date of the TCDS entry will need rework. It is an accepted process called Change Incorp. Basically the airplanes as built record is compared to the TCDS as built record and all the changes made along the development flight test process are reconfigured to the deliverable config. Each preproduction airplane is handled seperately…
Assuming that anybody will actually want those modified 777Xs — which will be several years old by the time they’re ready for delivery.
I think we can safely assume that BA won’t be making any profit on them…
It’ll be interesting to see when Boeing actually clears their inventory of 787s needing rework, as compared to their predictions for that task (as keesje pointed out above).
From Simple Flying, the 777X-9 now has 2,800 flight hours over 1,000 flights, and is approaching the end of the certification documentation phase.
Entry into TIA is expected later this year, with certification following soon thereafter.
This would imply Boeing has worked out the concerns raised by EASA and FAA.
https://twitter.com/simple_flying/status/1663964771333357570?s=61&t=woSFkufDENxNwGro8Zon9Q
Well, seeing as Rob has indulged himself in the luxury of going off-topic, why not join him with some other Boeing news-of-the-day?
“Pain and terror felt by passengers before Boeing Max crashed can be considered, judge rules”
“Families of passengers who died in the crash of a Boeing 737 Max in Ethiopia can seek damages for the pain and terror suffered by victims in the minutes before the plane flew nose-down into the ground, a federal judge has ruled.
“The ruling means that lawyers for the families will be able to call experts to testify about the victims’ pain and suffering before the 2019 crash, which killed everyone on board.
“The ruling posted late Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Jorge Alonso in Chicago is a setback for Boeing, which had argued that evidence about the victims’ suffering would be speculative.
“The decision comes in a case over compensation for the relatives of people who died in the second of two deadly crashes involving Boeing’s best-selling plane. A trial is scheduled to begin June 20.”
https://apnews.com/article/boeing-max-crash-passengers-fear-pain-trial-fe75ff7e155f1e6ff4881c830aa7337a
Just to clarify, from the article, only 6 of the accident families are seeking these claims. The vast majority are already settled.
Their attorneys are also seeking to alter the ruling of an accident, to a crime, even though the case is civil. All of this is to maximize the settlement they can get from Boeing. Which is their job.
Also both claims go against Illinois law, where the cases have been filed against Boeing. The judge has allowed the former claim in spite of the law, but has not yet ruled on the latter.
Ultimately the court has to decide what is fair, and Boeing has to abide. The claims will need to be established with evidence in court.
Yes. The same use of evidence that found Airbus ( along side Air France) negligent in the A330 crash over the Atlantic. The Paris judge hasnt yet awarded the damages
April 17, 2023: “Airbus, Air France acquitted of manslaughter charges in trial over 2009 Rio-Paris crash”
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20230417-french-court-acquits-air-france-airbus-over-2009-rio-paris-crash
Very different circumstances to the MAX crashes — though the BA Back Office consistently tries to sell a different story 😉
There is no question of Boeing’s negligence in these cases, they have already admitted to it. This is the award phase of the case.
Most of the families have settled, or are in the process of settling, based on compensatory damages for loss of life.
This group of 6 families, is pushing beyond that to include damages for pain and suffering, and thus have requested a trial to resolve that additional claim.
Boeing correctly pointed out that those claims are speculative. But the judge ruled the families have the right to present their case.
@ Rob
(1) “Negligence” doesn’t cover it any more — Boeing is currently facing criminal charges.
(2) 75 — not 6.
(3) “Boeing correctly pointed out that those claims are speculative”. This is another example of you trying to present opinion as fact. There’s no talk of who was/was’t “correct” until the case has concluded. Boeing has “argued”…not “correctly pointed out”.
Bryce, to clarify, there are no criminal charges against Boeing, apart from the DPA.
The attorneys for these 6 families filed a motion to declare the accident a crime, in civil court. This is another angle to increase the award. The judge has not yet ruled. But even if he agreed, there still would be no criminal charges.
There is no question as to the speculative nature of the claims. That’s why Illinois law does not normally allow them. The judge has made an exception to allow the claims to be heard. But they will still need to proven in court.
Unfortunately you are factually incorrect on all 3 counts of your post.
@ Rob
– Rob is conveniently forgetting that a judge in Texas has ruled that the MAX victims are victims of a crime.
– He’s also forgetting that BA has been arraigned on federal charges of fraud — which is a felony, not a misdemeanor.
– There’s a large body of evidence that demonstrates the distress of people facing imminent death, including in air accidents. So it’s actually BA that’s being speculative by trying to suggest otherwise.
Poor Rob — lots of damage control to be done on LNA today!
Just to clarify: there are currently 75 suits pending from accident families.
Their attorneys are attempting to get justice and adequate compensation for the victims of a criminal act.
https://news.yahoo.com/boeing-737-max-relatives-may-025531884.html
Again just to clarify, there are 75 unsettled cases, but only 6 have made these claims, and are involved in the upcoming trial.
@ Rob
Got a link to back up that assertion?
The usual sarcasm to justify a request from scavengers who always fly above a potential prey even if the lion is there (no pun intended)
Pathetic to see motivated lawyers for a piece of the cake 🍰🎂
It has already gone “pshit” the first time and will still “pshit” a second time, it won’t be the effect of a bomb.
I feel bad for them…
Bryce, its in the link you yourself posted.
You are even challenging your own assertions and links now.
@ Rob
The link that I posted says:
“…but lawyers say about 75 cases remain open, and six will be included in the upcoming trial in federal court in Chicago.”
That’s not the same as what you’re asserting…
Rob:
TIA requires quite a few test hours flown. You don’t get credit for those hours flown that are done before TIA.
You can do identical flights without TIA checking to see if it will pass and avoid surprises (and fix them if you find them) , but it is not a flight or two under TIA and you get your certification.
No question, I didn’t mean to imply that. Rather, we know the long delays in certification have not been related to TIA, or certification flight testing, but rather to the documentation phase. Getting the SSA’s to the level of acceptance by the regulators, has been the new challenge for Boeing.
Therefore I expect that once TIA is awarded, the rest will be fairly straightforward. Still months involved but not a major impediment.
Yes. TIA can also be approved on a per flight basis depending what part of the testing they are doing. So may have some ‘hours’ done already.
Duke:
Its not only TIA, though that is required. Its the fact that those TIA flight HAVE to be flown by FAA pilots. So, until TIA is issued, no flight hours required for TIA can be credited as TIA is not issued and no FAA pilots have done the tests required.
Boeing can do flights that do not require the TIA (building hours) but they can’t start to finish the flight program until they have those TIA hours.
Where Boeing is concerned, the opera is never over until the fat lady sings 😉
I have to agree there is a great deal of commonality there.
In regard to the Simple Flying tweet I posted above, about the 777X being near TIA, that may in fact have been a statement about the 737 MAX-10.
That is what’s being reported by Reuters, and makes a lot more sense. The MAX 10 is also awaiting TIA.
The original Simple Flying Tweet has also been deleted.
So I wanted to correct the record, Mike Fleming did not appear to address the 777X in his comments.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-737-max-7-certification-taking-considerable-amount-time-official-2023-05-31/
Good Lord, Rob — you’ve been an accessory in spreading fake news!
Shame on you! 😉
Truth matters, Bryce.
You didn’t do your due diligence before posting, did you, Rob?
And “truth” only matters to you when it suits your narrative 😉
Boeing is increasing 787 with a new line. Good for them. They need to increase production
This is basically just the conclusion of the transition of the Everett line to Charleston. COVID and the industry downturn interfered, but the market is recovering now.
Looks like supply chain issues may be easing somewhat:
“Airbus seen delivering at least 60 jets in May”
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/airbus-seen-delivering-least-60-jets-may-sources-2023-06-01/?rpc=401&
When I last counted (Tuesday evening), BCA’s May’s deliveries were also good:
– MAX: 37
– 787: 9
and there’ll be a handful of 777Fs and 767Fs in there also.
As with April and March, there were very few inventory planes among the MAX deliveries. However, it’s interesting to note that a 4.2 year-old MAX-8 delivered to United on May 30 was ntu by Hainan Airlines…so it looks as if BA may have quietly recommenced re-assigning ex-China frames to other customers. In contrast, about a quarter (14) of AB’s A320/A321 deliveries in May were to Chinese customers.
https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-737-max-8-n47291-united-airlines/ro1zlv
HNA the Hainan parent is under bankruptcy reorganisation, so likely any orders built but not delivered were cancelled
The Chinese state was the ordering party — Hainan was just the initially assigned recipient.
Nope. That’s not how “socialism with Chinese characteristics” works. HNA group is not a SOE.
Remind me which legacy airline in U.S. has not bankrupted at least once. Reorganization of debts of the holding company won’t impact the airline’s operation.
I see there are a lot of RR engined 787’s coming up. There’s one section of the production list from about January 2024 that shows 25 out of 31 frames will have RR engines.
That’s a big production jump for them.
Wow…that’s interesting.
Any idea which airlines/lessors are taking them?
Lufthansa, ANA, British Airways and Singapore Airlines all have a few coming up and there’s one for Egyptair and one for Air Tanzania due in the next year.
(Timings are my estimate based on a rate of four a month for this year, five a month from 2024 which is roughly the plan.)
**edit**
Egyptair actually have two in the production list but one is just about to join the FAL.
Thanks for the research.
Very informative.
I understand RR is selling Trent 10 engines under cost to recover some market share.