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Boeing Co. BA -is facing unusually public criticism from a major customer, Lion Air, as the two try to minimize fallout from a fatal crash.
Accident investigators are months away from determining the precise cause of the Oct. 29 crash that killed 189 people when the new Boeing 737 MAX 8 plunged into the Java Sea. Lion Air on Monday said it had reached a deal with a Dutch marine company to resume searching for the plane’s cockpit voice recorder.
Initial information pointing to potential maintenance, operation and design issues, however, has escalated a spat that exceeds typically private finger-pointing following a major airliner accident.
“I’m very disappointed with the way Boeing has behaved,” Lion Air co-founder Rusdi Kirana said in a recent interview.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
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LONDON—More than 100 flights at one of Europe’s busiest airports were grounded Thursday by drone operations that authorities say were a deliberate attempt to disrupt travel.
Police and military forces were involved in the response, Britain’s aviation minister Liz Sugg said. Sussex police said the drones were of an “industrial specification,” rather than a toy or amateur unmanned aircraft.
The incident, at Gatwick Airport—Britain’s busiest after London’s Heathrow—amplifies concerns about the threat to commercial flights from unmanned aircraft.
The drone flights near the airport began late Wednesday and continued into Thursday, the airport operator said. Some flights, including to the U.S., were grounded and others diverted to land at other airports, stranding, diverting or delaying tens of thousands of passengers in the run-up to the busy holiday travel period.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
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This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
An automated flight-control system on Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX aircraft, which investigators suspect played a central role in the fatal Oct. 29 jetliner crash in Indonesia, was largely omitted from the plane’s operations manual.
Additionally, it was the subject of debate inside Boeing, government and industry officials say.
Pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 battled systems on the Boeing 737 MAX for 11 minutes after the plane took off from Jakarta
They lost that fight and it crashed into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board. Boeing is devising a software fix and trying to reinstill confidence in the cockpit systems of the 737 MAX, which U.S. airlines have called safe.
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This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
JAKARTA, Indonesia—Lion Air’s co-founder says the giant low-cost carrier may cancel orders for more than 200 planes as relations between the two companies sour over an air crash that killed 189 people in October.
“I’m seriously considering canceling it,” Rusdi Kirana, co-founder of Indonesia’s Lion Air Group, told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. He cited “disappointment” with a Boeing statement last week that he said appeared to cast blame on Lion Air for the Oct. 29 crash of Flight 610. The new Boeing 737 MAX jet plunged into the Java Sea shortly after takeoff.