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Boeing has overhauled two internal systems for employees to flag potential safety issues and manufacturing problems. Boeing is out to prove it can police itself.
The jet maker said it has overhauled two flawed-but-critical internal systems in which employees flag potential safety issues and manufacturing problems.
The changes are part of Boeing’s response to last year’s near-catastrophic fuselage panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight. The company has said it aims to change a culture that employees, regulators and Boeing’s own executives say has historically discouraged employees from flagging problems.
“We’re trying to add additional guardrails,” said Boeing safety chief Don Ruhmann, speaking to reporters about the changes.
Boeing needs to convince Federal Aviation Administration officials that it is capable of turning out glitch-free airplanes. The company has been under close watch by federal regulators ever since a pair of fatal crashes of its 737 MAX planes in 2018 and 2019. After the Alaska Airlines incident, the FAA stepped up supervision of the company’s Renton, Wash., plant and installed a production cap on 737 MAX planes.
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Domestic India traffic should grow around 8.9%, and travel to China from Asia should grow around 8.5%
Airbus said it expects passenger traffic to grow 3.6% annually over the long term, led by growth in domestic India flights and across Asia. Photo: indranil mukherjee/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Airbus forecasts 3.6% annual passenger traffic growth long term, spurred by India and Asia.
Airbus said it expects passenger traffic to grow 3.6% annually over the long term, led by growth in domestic India flights and across Asia.
The plane manufacturer said that the growth in air travel will require 43,400 new passenger and freighter aircraft deliveries over the next 20 years. Around 34,250 will be single aisle and 9,170 will be widebodies, it said.
Airbus expects a doubling in the global in-service fleet to above 49,000 aircraft by 2044.
Passenger traffic will continue to grow despite short-term uncertainties, it said. The rise will be driven by global economic growth and a 1.5 billion increase in the global middle class.
Domestic India traffic should grow around 8.9%, followed by 8.5% growth in travel to China from Asia, Airbus said.
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The biggest capacity increases in low-cost wide-body traffic this year have come from Asian carriers, such as Singapore’s
Remember the days when New York-London, Los Angeles-Paris and Chicago-Barcelona round trips were sold for around $200? In the minds of many Americans, the much-touted “long-haul, low-cost” transformation of air travel ended when the big disrupter of this market, Norwegian Air Shuttle NAS 2.68%increase; green up pointing triangle, was forced to exit trans-Atlantic routes in 2021.
Yet the revolution may be more alive than ever, just in a different form.
Schedules for July and August show that budget airlines plan to offer 2.7 million monthly seats on wide-body jets such as the Boeing BA 0.33%increase; green up pointing triangle 787 Dreamliner and Airbus’s AIR -0.39%decrease; red down pointing triangle A330 and A350. In 2018 and 2019, which was the heyday of Norwegian and its peers—namely IAG-owned Level, Malaysia’s AirAsia X 5238 -0.61%decrease; red down pointing triangle and Australia’s Jetstar—that figure was below two million, according to Cirium Diio Mi.
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The company sees demand for more than 43,000 passenger and freighter aircraft between 2025 and 2044
Airbus will increase shareholder returns, raising its dividend payout ratio to 30%-50% amid robust aircraft demand.
Airbus said it would increase shareholder returns in the coming years, betting that robust demand for aircraft will continue to fuel growth.
The European plane maker said Wednesday that it was lifting its dividend payout ratio to between 30% and 50% from a current range of 30% to 40%. The company said special dividends and share buybacks remained on the table to return extra cash to shareholders.
The move shows a growing divide between Airbus and Boeing, which suspended dividend payments in March 2020. Airbus’s beleaguered rival has been mired in safety and production issues in recent years and is working to recover from the reputational and financial fallout.
Airbus shares rose more than 3% following the announcement that came during the Paris Air Show. The company bagged several aircraft orders at the annual trade event, underscoring strong demand for planes as airlines continue to expand capacity.
Airbus anticipates global demand for more than 43,000 passenger and freighter aircraft between 2025 and 2044, saying single-aisle planes would account for the bulk of new passenger-aircraft demand over the next two decades.
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Airbus said it won’t be meeting its annual targets for the year, including the number of commercial aircraft it planned to deliver, after its space-systems management team identified further commercial and technical challenges.
The European plane maker on Monday said that it will also book charges of about €900 million ($962.5 million) in the first half of 2024 following an extensive review of its space-systems programs.
Airbus expects to end the year delivering 770 commercial aircraft, down from a prior outlook of 800 commercial aircraft deliveries a couple of months ago.
The company said its A320 ramp-up trajectory has been adjusted to reflect specific supply-chain challenges in a degraded operating environment, and that its target production rate of 75 A320 Family aircraft a month is now set to be reached a year later, in 2027.
Airbus also forecasts adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of about €5.5 billion, below the €6.5 billion to €7 billion expected previously.
Airbus’s free cash flow before customer financing expectations have also been lowered to €3.5 billion from €4 billion, the company said.
The first-half expenses are mainly related to updated assumptions on schedules, workload, sourcing, risks and costs over the lifetime of certain telecommunications, navigation and observation programs, Airbus said.
Airbus’ first-half results are set to be published on July 30.
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Airbus will pay Spirit $439M for the sites and provide $200M in credit lines. Airbus agreed to acquire some Spirit AeroSystems facilities that make parts for its jets, moving to take direct control of production in a bid to stabilize supply chains after months of disruption.
The companies said Monday that they had entered into a definitive deal for Airbus to take over several of Spirit’s plants in the U.S., Europe and Africa that produce fuselage sections and other components for Airbus’s commercial aircraft.
Spirit, which split off from Boeing BA 3.18%increase; green up pointing triangle about two decades ago, has been at the center of quality issues affecting 737 MAX jets. Spirit made the fuselage involved in last year’s Alaska Airlines emergency landing.
The deal with Airbus comes months after U.S. rival Boeing struck a roughly $4.7 billion agreement to acquire the Kansas-based jet-parts maker, including most Boeing-related commercial operations as well as additional commercial, defense and aftermarket operations.
Airbus Chief Executive Guillaume Faury told shareholders at the company’s annual general meeting earlier this month that supply-chain hurdles, particularly with Spirit, were putting pressure on plans to ramp up production of its A220 narrow-body and A350 wide-body aircraft. Airbus was forced to delay the entry into service of the A350 freighter variant to the second half of 2027 from 2026 previously.
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Exits could complicate regulatory and air-traffic-control work, internal presentation says
Resignations and retirements are building across the agency, potentially affecting divisions that oversee everything from air traffic to legal matters and space launches, according to FAA documents and people close to the discussions.
The departures could complicate regulatory and air-traffic control work handled by the FAA. The agency is under scrutiny after January’s deadly midair collision in the Washington, D.C., area and a series of technology failures that have disrupted air travel.
“Employees are departing the agency in mass quantities across all skill levels,” according to a May 7 internal presentation to senior FAA management, outlining the effects of what is known as a deferred-resignation program.
The presentation, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal, flagged departures of senior leaders, technical experts and mission-support employees that it said would result in losing critical competencies and institutional knowledge. A similar presentation by the agency’s human-resources staff tallied more than 1,200 employees who were departing under the program.
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Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl wants to bring back flights that break the sound barrier. Now he just needs to figure out whether airlines and travelers will buy in.
When the Concorde was grounded in 2003, done in by strained economics and a fiery crash on a Paris runway, it appeared to be the end of the line for supersonic travel. Nothing emerged to replace it. In fact, the speed of air travel moved in the opposite direction, with many routes getting slower in recent years as congestion and air-traffic control inefficiencies jammed up the skies.
A former Amazon software engineer named Blake Scholl founded a company to change this. A decade ago, he launched Boom Supersonic, betting that his Denver-based startup could tap in to the allure of ultrafast travel—a desire that has never quite been extinguished despite the financial and practical challenges that ended the Concorde’s nearly 30-year run. Scholl sees a world where round-trip trans-Atlantic business journeys happen in a single day.
“The thinking has been, ‘Supersonic flight would obviously be great, but nobody is doing it so therefore it must be impossible,’ ” the 44-year-old chief executive said during a recent interview. “Not true.”
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