Archive for month: September, 2019

Air New Zealand and Boeing have inked a $2.7 billion (at list prices) worth contract for eight 787-10s. The Dreamliners are to replace the airline’s aging 777-200ERs. The airline, which already operates several Trent 1000-powered Dreamliners, appears to be tired with the never-ending Rolls-Royce engines issues, as it opted for Genx for its new purchase.

On September 25, 2019, Air New Zealand has confirmed the order for eight GEnx engine-powered 787-10s with option to increase the order by 12 more aircraft. The airline, Boeing and GE Aviation have initially made the deal in May 2019 by signing a letter of intent.

New Dreamliners, seating up to 330 passengers in a standard two-class configuration, are replacing the aging 777-200ERs in Air New Zealand’s fleet. Air NZ Chief Pilot, Captain David Morgan told NewsHub that the company has looked at Boeing 777X and Airbus A350 as potential replacement aircraft for its Boeing 777-200s, but decided to settle on Boeing 787-10 as it “is the right airplane for us”.

The deliveries are due to begin in September 2022 and last until 2027 (financial years of 2023-2028), unless the carrier decided to take the additional 12 787-10s, in which case deliveries would stretch until 2030 (financial year of 2031).

At that time, the carrier’s long haul fleet will consist of seven 777-300ERs, 14 787-9s and, of course, the eight 787-10s. However, the airline has also assured its shareholders that it has the right to switch from 787-10s to smaller 787-9s if it sees the need. The delivery schedule can also be delayed or accelerated by the airline.

“As many of you will know, in May, we announced our intention to replace our current fleet of Boeing 777-200 aircraft with the Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner powered by GE engines,” the airline’s CEO told shareholders before the voting on September 25, 2019. “Subject to shareholder approval later today, this multi-billion-dollar investment will be a game changer for our airline, offering a 25 percent improvement in fuel efficiency and opening up new opportunities for profitable network growth in the future”.

Air New Zealand currently operates 13 Dreamliners of the smaller -9 version (and is awaiting delivery of one more), which are powered by Trent 1000 engines. However, it appears that it had enough with problems plaguing Rolls-Royce engines. Of the two engine types available for Dreamliners (the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 and the GE GEnx), the airline has settled for the latter.

“The issues we faced with the global Rolls-Royce engines which impacted not only the Boeing 787 fleet, but our entire network, as uncertainty around aircraft availability had numerous knock-on effects across the business,” the airline’s chairman told shareholders on September 25, 2019.

Source: https://bit.ly/2mUr7Sq

Image: Stanislav Fosenbauer / Shutterstock.com

The Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) has revealed a new livery that will be present on their aircraft, starting with newest jets ‒ the Airbus A350 and the A320neo. The new paint job is a contemporary “take on classic Scandinavian design”, highlighting the next chapter in the airline’s book, as SAS is undergoing a fleet renewal program.

The new and rather bland livery is a “symbol of our future, a more sustainable and competitive future for SAS, but one that also embraces our heritage”, said the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Scandinavian airline, Rickard Gustafson. “Travelers from Scandinavia will recognize their home” and foreign passengers will come across “the renowned feeling of the Nordics”, he added.

The changes from the previous colors are a “fresher shade of gray”, which features an advanced coating material, reducing the number of layers that need to be applied on the fuselage, which in turn reduces fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Furthermore, a “proud and confident” SAS logo will appear at the front of an aircraft, while the blue tail at the back of the plane will also extend to the underbelly. New addition will be the word “Scandinavian” on the belly of the aircraft, with the same word is changing color on the aircraft’s engines. In addition, the flags of Denmark, Norway and Sweden “have been updated in a modern, elegant way”.

The new livery will be present on all aircraft by 2024, according to the airlines’ plans. Currently operated aircraft will be repainted during planned maintenance, while newly delivered jets will feature the fresh coat of paint as soon as they roll out of the paint shop. SAS plans to have 96 new Airbus aircraft by 2023. The airline currently flies 159 aircraft, with an average age of 10.2 years, according to planespotters.net data. SAS aims to reduce its emissions by 25% by 2030, and one of those ways will be to replace the inefficient Airbus A340 quad jets with the new A350, while the A320neo will allow the aging Boeing 737s to retire from the airline’s operations.

Take a look at the new livery:

Introducing our new look! A visual symbol of SAS modernizing our fleet and bringing the most fuel efficient planes, the @Airbus A320neo and A350 to our travelers. Painting out a more sustainable aviation future. Experience the new livery: https://t.co/RaAweEuVre #flysas #aviation pic.twitter.com/KmmjpAD8PN

— SAS – Scandinavian Airlines (@SAS) 19 de setembro de 2019

All pictures are courtesy of SAS.

Source: https://bit.ly/2kWSXfX

Image: SAS

In the coming weeks, several world aviation authorities should submit a report on the certification of the Boeing 737 MAX. The conclusions will reportedly be critical of the way the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) handled the approval of the aircraft.

The Joint Authorities Technical Review (JATR), a committee set up by the FAA in April 2019, regroups the EASA, aviation authorities from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Japan, and Singapore, as well as NASA. It was tasked with reviewing the approval procedures of the Boeing 737 MAX, after suspicions of collusion between the manufacturer and the U.S. regulator emerged.

The report, which the JATR should submit in the coming weeks, is apparently critical of the FAA’s methods, particularly of the way it delegated some of the approval processes to Boeing’s engineers.

According to a source close to the matter quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the report recommends an earlier involvement of the FAA in the design of new systems, particularly when they can influence pilot response times during emergency situations.

Shortly after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the Seattle Times revealed that the authority delegated some of the 737 MAX certification process to Boeing engineers, and specifically the review of the MCAS system which was blamed for two fatal 737 MAX crashes.

Discrepancies were found in the MACS report: the system is known for correcting the angle of the stabilizers by 2.5°, yet FAA documents state the maximum is only 0.6°. “The FAA believed the airplane was designed to the 0.6 limit, and that’s what the foreign regulatory authorities thought, too,” said an FAA engineer quoted by the media.

The MCAS relies on the reading of a single sensor while its potential failure was evaluated as one level below “catastrophic”, which goes against the usual FAA regulations. Preliminary inspection of the FDR data from the Flight 302 showed that “the two sensors differed by some 20 degrees not only throughout the flight but also while the airplane taxied on the ground before takeoff”.

The safety review also forgets to mention that the system can reset itself after each pilot input, ignoring the fact that it is able to repeatedly push the plane’s nose down.

The JATR report should be critical of the fact that these discrepancies did not alert the FAA, and will include new certification guideline suggestions to make sure it does not happen again.

“We will review all the recommendations and incorporate any proposal that would improve our certification activities,” an FAA spokesman told AFP. “We look forward to the publication of the JATR report when it is complete,” a Boeing spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the company continues to work with global regulators to safely return the 737 MAX to service.

On March 19, 2019, the EASA and Transport Canada had declared that they would not validate the decision of the FAA as it is custom but instead would run an independent investigation. The decision was confirmed by Patrick Ky, head of the EASA, in an audience with the European Parliament on September 3, 2019. More recently, it was reported that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation of India (DGCA) was also looking into testing and certifying the grounded 737 itself, rather than relying on the FAA‘s judgment.

Source: https://bit.ly/2lTICBI

Image: Chrisdorney

While Boeing prepares for the un-grounding of the MAX, the aviation agencies are also doing their homework ahead of the eventual green light for the 737 MAX to fly again. However, one of the agencies is going to approve the MAX themselves, rather than delegating the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to do so.

European Union Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) executive director, Patrick Ky, “exchanged views” before the European Parliament’s Committee on Transport and Tourism, which was just newly elected in May 2019. Ky shortly presented EASA’s role in the industry and of course, touched a very important topic – the Boeing 737 MAX and the type’s return to service.

During the presentation, Ky officially confirmed that the EASA will individually approve the MAX to fly only after Boeing has met four critical conditions. Firstly, the agency “insisted that any change proposed by Boeing on the resolution of these problems would need to be EASA approved”. Secondly, as the European Union and the United States have an agreement on air safety, the FAA approved parts that the EASA did not oversee. Thus, as the MAX re-enters service, the European agency will do a “broader review of the design of the critical safety systems on the MAX”, which the EASA delegated the FAA to certify back when the aircraft was approved for service in 2017 – a topic, “not very popular with our American colleagues”, according to Ky.

Thirdly, the EASA will have to have “a complete understanding of the two accidents” and finally, it will require that “flight crews are adequately trained” regarding the changes that Boeing made to the 737 MAX software. EASA’s executive director also noted that the agency is in “regular and in very strong contact” with the manufacturer and the FAA, as every party involved is trying to get the jet back up in the air.

Meanwhile, the FAA expects to conduct certification flights with the grounded jet in October 2019, as reported by the Seattle Times. Boeing stated that the company “assumes” that the 737 MAX will return to service “early in the fourth quarter 2019”. However, during his presentation, Ky noted that Boeing has not implemented changes that would provide “appropriate response to Angle Of Attack integrity issues”, questioning whether the assumption will come to fruition. MAX operators share the skepticism, as they look forward to for flights to resume in January 2020.

The changes to certification show how much the crisis has shaken up the industry, creating a rift between agencies. A recent example of how the agencies still worked together could be the Boeing 787 Dreamliner groundings back in 2013 when the aviation authorities grounded the type worldwide due to issues with batteries and electronic systems. The EASA followed the FAA’s directive and noted that the agency is “working closely with the FAA as the primary certification authority”.

But when the second 737 MAX suffered a fatal accident, the FAA was not seen as the “primary” agency anymore – Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) was, as it was the first aviation authority to ground the MAX. In contrast, the FAA had “not been provided data to draw any conclusions or take any actions”.

Two days later, the FAA joined the rest of the agencies and banned the narrow-body from operating commercial flights, one of the last agencies to do so. And, as Boeing aims to return the newest 737 family member to service as soon as possible, it seems like the FAA has lost its status as a leading agency, adding further complexity to the last chapter of the 737 MAX crisis.

Source: https://bit.ly/2kIrFtD

Image: Mark Van Scyoc