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United Airlines Cancels All Boeing 737 Max Flights Until July

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United Airlines revealed on April 16 it would extend a suspension on all flights using a controversial aircraft.

The airline will cancel all routes that would normally be flown with the Boeing 737 Max until at least July to give the carrier time to address a variety of safety concerns that allegedly caused two planes to crash in Ethiopia and the Java Sea in Indonesia, killing 346 passengers and crew members in the process.

The airline’s earlier ban on its 14 Max planes was originally intended to end on June 5. American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have also recently grounded exactly the same model.

In its first quarter financial results, United confirmed it had already received delivery of “four Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft (prior to the March 13, 2019 Federal Aviation Administration order grounding U.S.-registered 737 Max aircraft) and four Boeing 787—10 aircraft.”

The company had hoped to use the spare aircraft to offer more seats for passengers ahead of the busy summer vacation period.

“Moving forward, we’ll continue to monitor the regulatory process and nimbly make the necessary adjustments to our operation and our schedule to benefit our customers who are traveling this summer,” a spokesman for United told CNBC.

Despite the setback caused by the Maxes being grounded, United Airlines Chief Executive Officer Oscar Munoz is still upbeat about the rest of the year and thanked all United staff.

“We are more confident than ever that we’ll reach our long-term adjusted earnings per share targets we unveiled last year,” he said in a public statement. “I want to thank all 93,000 of our employees for their incredible work as we overcame some unique challenges.”

United expects a $292 million net income for the first quarter of the year, which was off the back of a 7.1 percent jump in total passenger revenue compared to the same period in 2018.

In addition, the company’s benchmark passenger revenue per available seat mile for the same period rose 1.1 percent compared to the previous year.

“We made important progress on our customer investments while making strategic decisions to manage our costs and producing pre-tax margin growth that we expect will lead our peers,” Munoz said.

U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged the challenges the aviation industry has faced following the Max disasters, and encouraged the industry to take the opportunity to reinvent the brand.

“No product has suffered like this one,” Trump said in a Twitter post dated April 15. “If I were Boeing, I would fix the Boeing 737 MAX, add some additional great features and rebrand the plane with a new name.”

If Boeing decides to follow Trump’s advice, there would be additional costs involved with rebranding the aircraft that would be passed on to airlines and finally the customer. The money would be used to comprehensively retrain pilots, while the updated model would involve less intense additional training.

Boeing is still finalizing its software upgrades for the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which will need to be submitted to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) before the 737 Max grounding order can be lifted.

The FAA is holding talks with representatives from United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and American Airlines about the next steps. More than 300 Maxes have been grounded across the world.

United Airlines’ profit doubles despite shutdown, 737 Max woes

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United Airlines said Tuesday that its first-quarter profit doubled to $292 million as it carried more passengers and limited costs other than fuel.

The results beat Wall Street expectations for a quarter that began with the partial government shutdown, which dinged travel by federal employees, and ended with Boeing 737 Max jets grounded around the world.

The airline gave an upbeat forecast of second-quarter revenue trends. However, Chicago-based United did not raise its full-year earnings prediction.

Executives of parent United Continental Holdings are scheduled to talk about the results with analysts and reporters on Wednesday. In a message to employees, CEO Oscar Munoz said the latest results vindicated a strategy of adding more flights, investing in customer service and managing costs.

United Airlines Memorial Coliseum is crass and depressing, but a deal is a deal

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Whether we like it or not — and we don’t, particularly — selling off naming rights to corporations has become a fairly common strategy for financing the construction of public sports venues without putting the full burden on taxpayers or the sports team. Typically, the deal is struck before the venue is built, so that fans get used to the idea of, say, the Banc of California Stadium (built on the former site of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena) from the start. It’s an international phenomenon as well. You think United Airlines Memorial Coliseum sounds funny? Try the Mitsubishi Forklift Stadion, a stadium in the Netherlands.

Prospects for Commercial Domestic Air Travel in Sight

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LAA Management and Staff of the William D. Coleman Airstrip in Zwedru

As LAA ends rural airstrips tour

Authorities at the Liberia Airport Authority (LAA) have ended a week-long assessment and inspection tour of five rural airstrips in the southeastern region of Liberia.

Airstrips toured included, The R.E. Murray in Greenville, Unification in Sass Town, William R. Tolbert in Grandcess, Alexander Tubman in Harper and William D. Coleman in Zwedru.

According to the Acting Managing Director of LAA, Bishop John Allan Klayee, the tour was aimed at identifying challenges confronting those airstrips and how the LAA could help mitigate them.

He added that part of the tour was to make these airstrips commercially viable, by linking Liberian cities thru air routes; something he said, could ease the burden of traveling for hours via road.

Bishop Klayee said he is optimistic that, with the revival of rural airstrips, Liberian cities could become centers of attraction thru tourism, trade and commerce.

The LAA, Bishop Klayee maintained, will develop a business case to find investors for its inter-city commercial airline plan.

The five-day tour had a team of eleven Liberian Airport Professionals including, Acting MD, Bishop John Allan Klayee; Deputy MD Operations, Sandra Daye; Deputy MD for Technical Services, Paula Fares; Chief Financial Officer, George D. Yuoh; and Spriggs Port Manager, Emmanuel Tarplah; among others.

Hypersonic air travel just took a step closer to reality

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Sixteen years after the Concorde supersonic airliner took its last flight, a handful of companies are working to create a new generation of airliners capable of flying faster than the speed of sound (Mach 1, or about 770 miles per hour). Firms like Boom and Aerion promise to be flying passengers at 1,000 miles per hour or more by the mid-2020s.

But some companies are working toward passenger planes that will leave these supersonic jets in the dust. These so-called hypersonic aircraft would be capable of flying at or above Mach 5, or about 3,800 miles per hour. At Mach 5, a trip from New York City to London would take just two hours instead of the typical seven or eight.

An English company claims to have taken a big step toward a hypersonic future. Reaction Engines, based in Oxfordshire, announced Monday that it had successfully tested an engine cooling system that could support aircraft flying at Mach 3.3. If subsequent tests go well, the “pre-cooler” system could help aircraft reach Mach 5 or higher — and possibly power a spaceplane.

The system addresses one of the biggest challenges in the development of hypersonic airplanes: controlling the buildup of extreme heat within engines.

The Sabre engine was created to curb the extreme heat buildup in hypersonic plane engines.Reaction Engines

At Mach 5, air temperatures inside an engine can reach 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s enough to melt metal, and it interferes with the combustion that generates the propulsive power. The pre-cooler lowers temperatures by passing super-hot air over thousands of tiny coolant-filled tubes.

In the first round of tests, conducted in March at a facility at the Colorado Air and Space Port in Adams County, researchers used a fighter jet engine to blast the experimental device with air heated to 788 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s just about the temperature that an engine would experience while traveling at Mach 3.3, or 2,532 miles per hour. The device cooled the airstream to a manageable temperature in less than 1/20th of a second, according to the company.

The successful test was “a hugely significant milestone,” Reaction Engines CEO Mark Thomas said in a statement.

Other experts expressed enthusiasm, too.

“It’s very exciting,” Jeffrey Hoffman, an aerospace engineering professor at MIT, said of the successful test. But, he added, “they’re basically trying something that’s very new, pushing materials to extreme limits, and there’s a lot of unknowns in there.”

In future testing, the pre-cooler will be challenged with temperatures even higher than the 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit typical of flight at Mach 5, the threshold for hypersonic flight. And Reaction Engines said craft powered by its cool-as-a-cucumber engine could someday reach speeds of Mach 25, or 16,537 miles per hour, in space. Just not anytime soon, Hoffman warns.

“There’s a long way to go before we’re flying hypersonic vehicles from the surface of the Earth up into orbit,” he said. “We just have to wait and see.”

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United Airlines cancels 737 Max flights through early July

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(WTNH) – United Airlines has extended its cancelling of all 737 Max flights through early July.

Last month, the FAA ordered all of those planes grounded after two deadly crashes overseas killed 346 people.

Related: American Airlines to keep entire fleet of 737 Max jets grounded until mid-August

United Airlines says it has used spare aircraft and other creative solutions since March to help minimize the impact on customers.
    

More Flight Cancellations for 737 MAX | Boeing

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Three of the largest U.S. airlines have extended their suspension of flights involving the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, indicating no resolution may be expected soon for the flight-control software problem on those jets. Southwest Airlines moved first in this direction, cancelling operations with its 31 737 MAX jets through August 5. United Airlines cancelled flights involving its 14 737 MAX jets through early July, while American cancelled flights on its 24 737 MAX aircraft through mid-August.

Last week Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg reported the OEM has completed 96 test flights of the 737 MAX with an updated Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) software, testing different in-flight scenarios to correct the causes of two 737 MAX crashes.

Muilenburg did not indicate any schedule for implementing the updated control software, though it’s been reported that the revised programming would be submitted for review by the Federal Aviation Administration, European Air Safety Administration, and other major regulatory  by mid-month.

The “anti-stall” software cited as causing the crashes was developed to off-set the effect of more fuel-efficient engines adopted for the new version of the 737, but which because of their larger size alter the planes’ aerodynamic behavior. The MCAS software apparently responded to inaccurate flight data and sent the two planes into nose dives that the crews were unable to reverse.

Boeing already has halted all 737 MAX deliveries and cut the production rate on all 737 aircraft by 20%, as it diverts resources to correct the cause of two fatal crashes of 737 MAX jets in the past six months.

The FAA and other major regulatory agencies last month suspended all 737 MAX flights, making the carriers’ decisions to cancel flights procedural. However, by extending the cancellations United Airlines, American Airlines, and Southwest Airlines are indicating no resolution may be expected for months, rather than weeks, and so they are revising their reservation systems and other resources accordingly.

A total of 346 passengers and crew members were killed in crashes of a Lion Air flight in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March.

Trump tweets he would ‘FIX’ and ‘REBRAND’ Boeing’s 737 Max

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(Jim Young/Reuters) Rachel Siegel Aaron Gregg April 15 at 2:28 PM

President Trump began Monday morning on Twitter by offering a lesson in Branding 101.

The test case: “If I were Boeing.”

Just weeks ago, as Boeing came under intense scrutiny for the safety of its 737 Max 8 planes, Trump asserted: “Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT.”

But he took a different tack Monday when he said that if he were in charge of the American aviation giant — as opposed to, say, the executive branch — he would “FIX the Boeing 737 MAX, add some additional great features, REBRAND the plane with a new name.”

“No product has suffered like this one,” Trump tweeted. “But again, what the hell do I know?”

The tweet stands in contrast with his earlier stance that the problem with air travel was that flying had just become “far too complex.”

“I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better.”

However, an aviation consultant who spent two years as marketing director for Trump’s ill-fated aviation venture, Trump Shuttle, described Trump as a “marketer’s marketer” who had little business expertise in airplanes or airlines.

Trump spent lavishly on gilded interiors for his company’s planes but wanted to cut corners on important safety issues, including an FAA requirement to have three pilots in the planes, Henry Harteveldt said.

“The 727 required three pilots but he at one point questioned why we needed the third pilot — the flight engineer — and we had to explain to him why you can’t just do that,” Harteveldt said.

Trump shuttle ceased to exist after 1992 when it merged with another company.

Boeing has come under intense scrutiny — from regulatory agencies and customers alike — since two 737 Max planes crashed within a five-month window, killing 346 people. But the special relationship between the 102-year-old company and the federal government made it all the more noteworthy for Trump to claim that “no product has suffered like this one.”

As The Washington Post reported last month, Boeing and the U.S. government have historically relied upon one another, “together creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, outfitting the United States with top military aircraft and supplying planes worldwide to allow the growth of passenger air travel and to boost U.S. exports.” Yet those close ties are being seen through a more critical lens as Boeing and U.S. regulators appeared slow to react to the March 10 crash of a Boeing 737 Max 8 jet in Ethiopia.

Trump hardly stood apart from earlier presidents in his broad support for Boeing. Speaking at a Boeing plant in South Carolina in 2017, Trump closed out his speech saying, “God bless you, may God bless the United States of America, and God bless Boeing.”

[When it comes to airplanes, Trump likes to play expert in chief]

Last week, the White House Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced it would pursue tariffs against a slate of aircraft and airplane parts coming from the European Union, as well as other products such as brandy and brooms from E.U. countries. The office warned that the tariffs would have consequences for an extended trade dispute involving Airbus, the European aircraft behemoth, and said the damage caused by E.U. subsidies totaled $11 billion every year.

“The World Trade Organization finds that the European Union subsidies to Airbus has adversely impacted the United States, which will now put Tariffs on $11 billion of EU products!” Trump said on Twitter. “The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop!”

The president’s Monday morning tweet came four weeks into a worldwide grounding of Boeing 737 Max jets — a precaution that will likely drag on for some time. American Airlines said Sunday it was canceling flights on the aircraft through Aug. 19 while it waits for Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration to fix and recertify the 737 Max’s flight-control systems.

“We remain confident that the impending software updates, along with the new training elements Boeing is developing for the MAX, will lead to recertification of the aircraft soon,” American Airlines President Robert Isom and CEO Doug Parker wrote in a letter to pilots and employees.

United Airlines on Monday said it was cancelling Boeing 737 Max flights through early July, CNBC reported.

Harteveldt said like many travelers, Trump failed to understand the complexities of running an airline or aircraft safety.

“He certainly does understand branding and marketing,” he said. “In this case, though, when it comes to airplanes, he doesn’t understand the details and complexity that come with aircraft design and certification. He’s not a pilot, he’s not an aviation professional, he’s a traveler. And travelers don’t always understand the details of how the airlines work.”

Trump Shuttle got its start in 1989 when Trump bought Eastern Airlines out of bankruptcy, acquiring a small fleet of Boeing 727 jets.

Trump then spent about $1 million on each of the 21 planes, installing luxury furnishings including chrome-plated seat belts embossed with the Trump logo. He had little knowledge of the planes themselves, however, and was not sensitive to the technical and regulatory side of running an airline, Harteveldt said.

As far as Trump’s suggestion that the 737 Max be fixed and rebranded: “You cannot just rebrand an airplane,” Harteveldt said. “Airplanes are not detergent or gum or aspirin. … They are certified by the FAA as a specific model according to the training that pilots and flight attends need.”

Harteveldt said Boeing would likely view Trump’s early-morning tweet as “more of a nuisance than anything else,” noting that Boeing has been in the crosshairs of the presidential Twitter account before.

On Dec. 6, 2016, a month after his election but before his inauguration, Trump said on Twitter that Boeing’s contract to build Air Force One should be canceled entirely because of its high costs. Early last year, the White House announced that it had reached a deal with Boeing for two airplanes at a cost of $3.9 billion.

Harteveldt described the 737 Max as a “brand extension” to an older model of 737s. An entirely different plane would have had trouble breaking into a market where generations of 737 jets are already accepted.

“Large 737 customers didn’t want a new airplane,” he said. “It would have been more complex and expensive in terms of onboarding the new plane. Not just certifying with the FAA, but the amount of knowledge and training that went into it.”