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Smaller, ultraefficient long-range airliners are overtaking the once celebrated giant of the sky; crammed seats and fewer perks<br>
About a year ago, a Boeing BA 0.41% 747 operated by Delta Air Lines took off from Atlanta for a three-hour flight to Pinal Airpark, a boneyard for unwanted aircraft in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert.<p>
The once celebrated giant of the sky, which had transformed international travel with its size and range, had flown its last flight for a U.S. airline.
Delta has replaced its fleet of jumbo jets with Airbus A350s, one of a new breed of smaller, ultraefficient long-range airliners. Nearly every other airline in the world is doing a version of the same thing, replacing huge jets with smaller ones.
This is an excerpt from The Wall Street Journal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Since the fatal Southwest Airline accident the FAA is conducting a new review of jetliner engines. The enhanced hazard assessments revealed by acting Federal Aviation Administration chief Daniel Elwell, focus on potential threats from structural failures of front engine covers, called cowlings. Mid-air breakups of such ancillary parts typically haven’t been considered in safety analyses or mandatory certification standards for modern jet engines.
But, in the wake of the highly unusual engine failure that destroyed a cowling and killed a Southwest passenger in April, Mr. Elwell said the agency for the first time is looking into the extent of danger posed by precisely such rare events.
This is an excercpt from the series Far & Away, from National Geographic and The Wall Street Journal.
OF ALL THE JOYS of a bygone era of luxury air travel, Concorde was in a class by itself: supersonic flights that shrank the globe and made the hands of clocks tick backward. Now we’re closer than ever to a return to supersonic flights on commercial airlines, at prices far more affordable than Concorde ever was.
By the end of this year, a bluntly named aircraft manufacturing startup, Boom Technology, says it will fly a one-third size model of its supersonic airliner. The plane is called Baby Boom and it will test design and performance. The full-scale Boom airplane is scheduled to start three years of testing and certification in 2020. Many hurdles lay ahead, but the jet could be flying passengers in late 2023. Virgin Atlantic has ordered the first 10 of the $200 million jets. Other airlines have signed on, Boom Technology says, and a total of 76 orders are on the books so far.
Boom Technology says its Mach 2.2 plane will be able to get from New York to London in three hours, 15 minutes with round-trip tickets priced at about $5,000. Day-trips across oceans for business meetings would be possible. San Francisco to Tokyo would be five and a half hours instead of 11 hours today.
The plane will be roughly the length of a 737, only skinnier, and carry up to 55 passengers. Most rows will have a single seat on each side of the aisle with under-seat storage for carry-on bags. Seating will be about the same size as domestic first class today—38-inches for each row. While lie-flat business-class beds may be an option, there’s no need for them when you’re in the air as long as it currently takes to get from New York to Dallas.
Airbus SE is hunting for a new captain (CEO) to steer it through some of its worst turbulence in years.
The plane maker is facing investigations around the world over alleged corruption at a time when many of its most senior executives have laid plans to depart or already exited. While Airbus has secured orders for jets that have lengthened its backlog for years, it and rival Boeing Co. face big production challenges—including tight supply lines—to deliver those planes.
Airbus on Friday confirmed Chief Executive Tom Enders wouldn’t seek an extension to his contract beyond April 2019. His No. 2, Chief Operating Officer Fabrice Brégier, who runs the commercial plane division that delivers most of Airbus’s revenue and profit, will leave in February.