This is just a Letter of Intent - it's the ultimate in cancellable orders, and ultimately I wouldn't be surprised to see it convert into 77X and 787 somewhere down the line (if not just be cancelled altogether). I also wonder just how big a discount was offered and guaranteed against any possible future order of ANYTHING, in return for something like this to be announced and shore up the share price.

Also completely overshadows IAGs order for 14 321XLRs, which will be used for US single aisle routes out of Dublin.

After doing some more digging, it seems that BAs share of these would be intended for Gatwick - so very much the low cost tourist end of BA operations. High value business operations out of Heathrow won't be risked by this. That would be consistent with the other target airlines for these planes - LEVEL, and Vueling.

EDIT - worth also noting that as of IAGs last annual report (December), IAG had confirmed orders of 92 A32xneo and options on a further 128, all to be delivered by 2023. How much do you want to bet that Willie Walsh is already on the phone to Toulouse - lower the price or we'll cancel and take the Boeing planes instead?

Didn't they just get awarded a $6.5B contract by the US Government for Military planes last week?

Didn't O'Leary place a huge order for new Boeings in the wake of 9/11 when airline shares were in freefall?

Boeing's 737 MAX series— first announced in 2011 and put to service in 2017 — is the fourth generation of its 737 aircraft, a widely popular narrow-body aircraft model that has been a mainstay of short-haul aircraft routes across the globe.

By March 2019, the entire global fleet was suspended by a US presidential decree, following the second fatal crash involving a 737 MAX that killed 157 people in Ethiopia.

The first crash involving the 737 MAX jet happened off the coast of Indonesia in October 2018, killing 189 people.

In the time since the two fatal crashes, some of the families of the 346 people killed have sought compensation, while aircraft carriers — such as Norwegian Air — have sought compensation from the American manufacturer for lost revenue as a result of the plane's global ban.

This latest lawsuit filed against Boeing marks the first class action lodged by pilots qualified to fly the 737 MAX series, who have alleged that Boeing's decisions have caused them to suffer from monetary loss and mental distress since the jet's suspension.

The originating plaintiff, known as Pilot X —who has chosen to remain anonymous for "fear of reprisal from Boeing and discrimination from Boeing customers" — lodged the statement of claim on Friday, which seeks damages for them and more than 400 colleagues who work for the same airline.

In court documents seen by the ABC, the claim alleges that Boeing "engaged in an unprecedented cover-up of the known design flaws of the MAX, which predictably resulted in the crashes of two MAX aircraft and subsequent grounding of all MAX aircraft worldwide."

They argue that they "suffer and continue to suffer significant lost wages, among other economic and non-economic damages" since the fleet's global grounding.

The class action will be heard in a Chicago court, with a hearing date set for October 21, 2019.

Boeing ... will not offer the 737 Max for FAA certification until it has “satisfied all requirements for certification and its safe return to service”.

Boeing has acknowledged the new issue on the Boeing 737 Max recently uncovered by the US Federal Aviation Administration, but gave no indication how long remedying it will take.

The FAA found a data processing issue that could force the 737 MAX to dive in-flight, which pilots had difficulty recovering from in simulator tests, according to Bloomberg. This new issue is similar to the one responsible for two crashes since October 2018 that killed 346 people.

Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers

It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.

The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.

Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India.

This is 'funny':



https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -engineers

And what will happen to the Managerial geniuses, who thought this was a good idea; & signed off on the results ?, Nothing !!!

What will happen to the board that demanded this bullshit; nothing !!!

If it gets really, really, bad; & the shareholders demand blood; they'll give a few of them gold plated payoffs & send them on their way.

It's fucking sickening

President Tucker Carlson would have them in prison.

Panorama putting the boot in there.

Dunno what Panorama are saying, but Boeing are planning to close the 737 line. They're running out of storage space and are expecting recertification to run well into next year

Adam Dickson worked at Boeing for 30 years and led a team of engineers who worked on the 737 Max. He said they were under constant pressure to keep costs down.

"Certainly what I saw was a lack of sufficient resources to do the job in its entirety," he says.

"The culture was very cost centred, incredibly pressurised. Engineers were given targets to get certain amount of cost out of the aeroplane."

Mr Dickson said engineers were under pressure to downplay new features on the 737 Max.

He said by classifying them as minor rather than major changes, Boeing would face less scrutiny from the US regulator, the Federal Aviation Administration.

"The goal was to show that those differences were so similar to the previous design that it would not require a major design classification in the certification process. There was a lot of interest and pressure on the certification and analysis engineers in particular, to look at any changes to the Max as minor changes."

I assume they're expanding on their initial teaser article from this morning, the way they usually do.





I'm shocked; shocked, I tells ya

I second that eye roll.

I'd say a lot of us on here, have worked for Multi-Nationals, who while they loudly blather on about, 'values', & 'culture', & other such bullshit; are ultimately, all about profit.

No-one gets promoted for choosing 'culture', or declared values; at the expense of actual Profit !

Everyone knows this, but bugger all people actually say it; I know this particularly well, because I was frequently one of those lightning rods who did point out when the company was being two-faced; & often ended up being pulled aside later by my manager, for them to caution be about being, 'cynical'; or, honest, as I preferred to say.

I've nothing against profit, because smart companies have mechanisms to enable employees to invest in their companies, & do well for themselves; when the company does well; but the problems occur; when critical employees, & managers, are put in a position, where they do better, if the customer does worse.

These people were put in a position, where effectively; for every person who died in a crash; the were rewarded more.

It’s a high pressure industry, and many fast tracked managers wont pay that extra for quality because they don’t understand the difference between quality design, requirements, code and testing from aggregated figures on a spreadsheet.

I'd say a lot of us on here, have worked for Multi-Nationals, who while they loudly blather on about, 'values', & 'culture', & other such bullshit; are ultimately, all about profit.

No-one gets promoted for choosing 'culture', or declared values; at the expense of actual Profit !

Everyone knows this, but bugger all people actually say it; I know this particularly well, because I was frequently one of those lightning rods who did point out when the company was being two-faced; & often ended up being pulled aside later by my manager, for them to caution be about being, 'cynical'; or, honest, as I preferred to say.

I've nothing against profit, because smart companies have mechanisms to enable employees to invest in their companies, & do well for themselves; when the company does well; but the problems occur; when critical employees, & managers, are put in a position, where they do better, if the customer does worse.

These people were put in a position, where effectively; for every person who died in a crash; the were rewarded more.

It's what happens when bean counters take over from engineers in manufacturing companies.

Not really.

Often the people on both sides are Engineers; at least they were in the Company I worked for; but, one group have thrown away their engineering cards, & swapped them for chinos & button-down shirts.

I'd say a lot of us on here, have worked for Multi-Nationals, who while they loudly blather on about, 'values', & 'culture', & other such bullshit; are ultimately, all about profit.

No-one gets promoted for choosing 'culture', or declared values; at the expense of actual Profit !

Everyone knows this, but bugger all people actually say it; I know this particularly well, because I was frequently one of those lightning rods who did point out when the company was being two-faced; & often ended up being pulled aside later by my manager, for them to caution be about being, 'cynical'; or, honest, as I preferred to say.

I've nothing against profit, because smart companies have mechanisms to enable employees to invest in their companies, & do well for themselves; when the company does well; but the problems occur; when critical employees, & managers, are put in a position, where they do better, if the customer does worse.

These people were put in a position, where effectively; for every person who died in a crash; the were rewarded more.

I'd decided in my early teens I was destined to be an Engineer, once I realized I wasn't creative enough to be an architect; and over the next few years, before I ended up in college, these were some of the International events I remembered pouring over the official reports of.

Bhopal Disaster - 1984
Challenger - 1986
Chernobyl - 1986
Piper Alpha - 1988

In ever single case, I saw, dogma, or short term monetary concerns; triumph over actual objective common sense, or simple human decency; & in each & ever case; the poor schmuck who stood up for those; got fucked !

In the case of Bhopal, it would have cost about $100 to prevent the disaster, Challenger was a few days delay; Chernobyl, another delay; or God forbid, pointing out that an experiment was catastrophically stupid & dangerous; piper alpha was a simple f**ked up LOTO procedure.

All preventable, & all disasters where the short term, 'Gain', was wiped out a million fold, by the reality of exactly the consequences the engineers warned about.

I assume they're expanding on their initial teaser article from this morning, the way they usually do.





I'm shocked; shocked, I tells ya

The one thing that I've noticed (and I once read a great article articulating this with regards to the Challenger disaster, but be buggered if I can find it now) is people's short-term memory/understanding of where the risk actually lies. i.e. in the Challenger disaster, the issue was taking off when the launch site was so cold. It was considerably colder than what was deemed to be the acceptable level, but because they had been dipping down below what had previously been agreed safe temp levels for previous launches, they had a false perception of where they sat within the risk profile.

And I see similar all the time. People push the envelope a little, see nothing catastrophic happens, and then move the 'safe line' to this new point, and once there, they do it again. They think they are smart, saving money and time...when in fact, all that is happening is either negligent or incompetent people are just playing inside the safety factors.

That's a rather naive statement. The stated directives; to the Lead Engineer I quoted, speak to a direct knowledge of all of these; & a desire to avoid the correct classification of changes from the original 737 design, so that the company could avoid the proper certification processes.

It's never an act of ignorance, if it is done such a deliberate & exact manner.

Senior Management knew that the, 'correct', classification of the 737 MAX would entail a much more significant expenditure, & they; very deliberately tried to deceive the FAA; & they decided it was preferable to kill hundreds of passengers, than follow the correct processes.

I'd agree with the first part of your bolded sentence, although perhaps not the second - a jaundiced view of the safety and certification process isn't really a conscious decision.

There's a parallel with the Nimrod crash, where Qinetiq and BAe just bodged through safety case checks as the plane was considered safe and the perception was no-one really needed to bother with the legislative bureaucracy and cost. They weren't actually seeking to release an unsafe plane, but had become complacent.

You don't pay Engineers to Think, you pay them to Know !

They Thought it was Safe; but they didn't test it appropriately, so they didn't Know, it was Safe !

Further; if you aren't sure what the appropriate test scheme is; you use the most exhaustive one you have.

The one thing that I've noticed (and I once read a great article articulating this with regards to the Challenger disaster, but be buggered if I can find it now) is people's short-term memory/understanding of where the risk actually lies. i.e. in the Challenger disaster, the issue was taking off when the launch site was so cold. It was considerably colder than what was deemed to be the acceptable level, but because they had been dipping down below what had previously been agreed safe temp levels for previous launches, they had a false perception of where they sat within the risk profile.

And I see similar all the time. People push the envelope a little, see nothing catastrophic happens, and then move the 'safe line' to this new point, and once there, they do it again. They think they are smart, saving money and time...when in fact, all that is happening is either negligent or incompetent people are just playing inside the safety factors.

You most definitely pay engineers to think - reasoning through from first principles is one of the most basic tenets of engineering.

I assume the point you were making was that they assumed the design was safe, given historical safety records of the plane (both 737 and Nimrod) but didn't demonstrate and ultimately prove the design was safe given some key design changes. This I agree with, but I'd more readily believe it was caused by complacency than any other cause.

I still find it hard to understand how any aerospace company can self-certify its work, or have any say in what constitutes a change worthy of re-certification. I'm doing a lot of work in IT now, and a fundamental of security (as close as any digital service tends to get to safety) is that an external company is used for penetration testing (fnar fnar). People involved in the product development can get too caught up in it, too blind to what are sometimes pretty clear risks, and too invested in the product to critically evaluate.

Lion Air crash investigation faults Boeing 737 Max design and oversight
The families of victims in last year's Lion Air crash have been told by Indonesian investigators that poor regulatory oversight and the design of Boeing's 737 Max contributed to the fatal disaster.

Investigators on Wednesday provided victims' relatives with a summary of their final report on the crash, which killed 189 people. Details from the briefing for family members were shared with CNN by Anton Sahadi, a spokesperson for the relatives.

The report summary said that faulty "assumptions" were made during the design and certification of the 737 Max about how pilots would respond to malfunctions by the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), according to the presentation seen by CNN.

MCAS lowers the nose of the plane when it receives information that the aircraft is flying too slowly or steeply, and at risk of stalling. The system was vulnerable because it relied on a single angle of attack (AOA) sensor, investigators said.

The AOA sensor on the doomed Lion Air plane had been miscalibrated during a repair, according to investigators. But the airline's maintenance crews and pilots couldn't identify the problem because one of the aircraft's safety features — the AOA Disagree alert — was not "correctly enabled during Boeing 737-8 (Max) development," they said...

...A spokesman for Indonesia's National Transportation Safety Commission said Wednesday that its final report will publish on Friday.

It has been sent to the US National Transportation Safety Board and other relevant parties, and those parties have replied with comments, the spokesman said.
============
Note:
The Indonesian NTSC investigated that the replacement vane had been a recertified Rosemount Aerospace's AOA sensor which had been serviced by a USA company in Florida. Please read the following news article for details: Faulty 737 Sensor In Lion Air Crash Linked To US Repairer .

- https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/23/b...air/index.html
- https://www.thejakartapost.com/news/...-repairer.html

Lion Air Families Told 737 MAX Design Flaws Linked To Deadly Crash
Mechanical and design issues contributed to the crash of a Lion Air 737 MAX jet last October, Indonesian investigators told victims’ families in a briefing on Wednesday ahead of the release of a final report.

Contributing factors to the crash of the new Boeing (BA.N) jet, which killed all 189 on board, included incorrect assumptions on how an anti-stall device called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) functioned and how pilots would react, slides in the presentation showed.

The briefing slides showed that a lack of documentation about how systems would behave in a crash scenario, including the activation of a “stick shaker” device that warned pilots of a dangerous loss of lift, also contributed.

“Deficiencies” in the flight crew’s communication and manual control of the aircraft contributed as well, the slides showed, as did alerts and distractions in the cockpit.

The deficiencies had been “identified during training,” the slides said, without elaborating.

Reliance on a single angle-of-attack sensor made MCAS more vulnerable to failure, while the sensor on the plane that crashed had been miscalibrated during an earlier repair, according to the slides.

The final report will be released on Friday...

- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-i...-idUSKBN1X20EJ