Flying the unfriendly skies

[kscarbel2]

Please, someone correct me if my loose understanding of the history is incorrect.

The Kingdom of Israel was conquered/destroyed by the Assyrians in 750 BC.

The area went on to be ruled by Babylonia, Persia, Macedonia and Hasmoneans. Then Palestine was created as a colony of the Roman Empire about 2,000 years ago.

After the Roman era, the region was controlled by the Byzantine Empire, Islamic Jihad, Crusaders, Egyptians and finally the Ottoman/Turkish Empire until World War One.

Under a 1922 League of Nations (UN predecessor) mandate, Great Britain drove the Turks out and took control.

In 1948, the Arabs were forced out and Israel was formed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel

[41chevy]

41 minutes ago, kscarbel2 said:

Please, someone correct me if my loose understanding of the history is incorrect.

The Kingdom of Israel was conquered/destroyed by the Assyrians in 750 BC.

The area went on to be ruled by Babylonia, Persia, Macedonia and Hasmoneans. Then Palestine was created as a colony of the Roman Empire about 2,000 years ago.

After the Roman era, the region was controlled by the Byzantine Empire, Islamic Jihad, Crusaders, Egyptians and finally the Ottoman/Turkish Empire until World War One.

Under a 1922 League of Nations (UN predecessor) mandate, Great Britain drove the Turks out and took control.

In 1948, the Arabs were forced out and Israel was formed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel

November 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, announcing its intention to facilitate the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people in the British controlled Palestine"

But observing history, perhaps we should support the UN in returning all of Israel to Palestinian rule. Let Hamas, the PLO and the U.N. sort out a " Final Jewish Solution"

One side note. the British turned over arms, bases and supplies to the Arabs expecting them wipe out the Jews.

[kscarbel2]

The information on that Wikipedia link is interesting.

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"During World War 1, most Jews supported the Germans because they were fighting the Russians who were regarded as the Jews' main enemy. In Britain, the government sought Jewish support for the war effort for a variety of reasons including an erroneous antisemitic perception of "Jewish power" over the Ottoman Empire's Young Turks movement, and a desire to secure American Jewish support for US intervention on Britain's behalf.

There was already sympathy for the aims of Zionism in the British government, including the Prime Minister Lloyd George. In late 1917, the British Army drove the Turks out of Southern Syria, and the British foreign minister, Lord Balfour, sent a public letter to Lord Rothschild, a leading member of his party and leader of the Jewish community. The letter subsequently became known as the Balfour Declaration of 1917. It stated that the British Government "view[ed] with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people". The declaration provided the British government with a pretext for claiming and governing the country. New Middle Eastern boundaries were decided by an agreement between British and French bureaucrats. The agreement gave Britain control over what parties would begin to call Palestine."

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Classic colonialism, Great Britain and France meddling in other lands "as if" they had a right.

[41chevy]

6 minutes ago, kscarbel2 said:

-Classic colonialism, Great Britain and France meddling in other lands "as if" they had a right.

 British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Germans, Americans,  Russians, Turks, Japanese and Chinese, to add to the list

[other dog]

Oh well, opening a can of worms so to speak...2nd.  Chronicles, 2nd. Kings. The Lord blessed those who shunned all others... Good for Donald Trump for standing up to those who oppose him, and standing up for biblical principals! 

[kscarbel2]

Reuters  /  November 15, 2018

WASHINGTON - American Airlines said on Wednesday it was "unaware" of some functions of an anti-stall system on Boeing Co's 737 MAX until last week.

Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued guidance on the system last week after a Lion Air jet crashed in Indonesia on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people on board.

The FAA warned airlines last week that erroneous inputs from the system's sensors could lead the jet to automatically pitch its nose down even when autopilot is turned off, making it difficult for pilots to control.

The system was designed to prevent the jet from stalling, according to information provided by Boeing to airlines.

"We value our partnership with Boeing, but were unaware of some of the functionality of the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) installed on the MAX 8," an American Airlines spokesman said. [Boeing never told American Airlines this rather important nugget of information]

"We must ensure that our pilots are fully trained on procedures and understand key systems on the aircraft they fly."

Indonesian investigators said on Monday the situation the crew of a doomed Lion Air jet was believed to have faced was not contained in the aircraft's flight manual. U.S. pilot unions were also not aware of potential risks, pilot unions told Reuters.

[kscarbel2]

Airbus ends A380 production

Tim Hepher, Reuters  /  February 14, 2019

TOULOUSE, France - Loved by passengers, feared by accountants, the world’s largest airliner has run out of runway after Airbus decided to close A380 production after 12 years in service due to weak sales.

The decision to halt production of the A380 superjumbo is the final act in one of Europe’s greatest industrial adventures and reflects a dearth of orders by airline bosses unwilling to back Airbus’s vision of huge jets to combat airport congestion.

Air traffic is growing at a near-record pace but this has mainly generated demand for twin-engined jets nimble enough to fly directly to where people want to travel, rather than bulky four-engined jets forcing passengers to change at hub airports.

And while loyal supporters like top customer Emirates say the popular 544-seat jet makes money when full, each unsold seat potentially burns a hole in airline finances because of the fuel needed to keep the huge double-decker structure aloft.

“It’s an aircraft that frightens airline CFOs; the risk of failing to sell so many seats is just too high,” said a senior aerospace industry source familiar with the program.

Airlines had initially rushed to place orders, expecting it to lower operating costs and boost profits as the industry crawled out of a slowdown in tourism since September 2001.

Airbus boasted it would sell 700-750 A380s, which nowadays cost $446 million at list prices, and render the 747 obsolete.

In fact, A380 orders barely crossed the 300 threshold and the 747 has outlived its rival, after reaching the age of 50 this week.

The seeds of the A380’s fall from grace were already present behind the scenes of the 2005 launch party.

Despite public talk of unity, the huge task was about to expose fractures in Franco-German co-operation that sparked an industrial meltdown. When the delayed jet finally reached the market in 2007, the global financial crisis was starting to bite. Scale and opulence were no longer wanted. Sales slowed.

At the same time, engine makers who had promised Airbus a decade of unbeatable efficiencies with their new superjumbo engines were fine-tuning even more efficient designs for the next generation of dual-engined planes, competing with the A380.

Finally, a restless Airbus board started demanding a return and stronger prices just when the plane desperately needed an aggressive relaunch and fresh investment.

Despite its own deep industrial problems, Boeing was winning the argument with its newest jet, the 787 Dreamliner. It was designed to bypass hubs served by the A380 and open routes between secondary cities: a strategy known as “point to point”.

Airbus fought back, arguing that travel between megacities would nonetheless dominate air transport.

But economic growth would splinter in ways Airbus did not predict. Intermediary cities are growing almost twice as fast as megacities. That’s a boon for twinjets like the Boeing 787 and 777 or Airbus’s own A350, which has outsold the A380 three to one.

Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders, who was rarely seen as an enthusiastic backer of the A380, toyed with ending the project about two years ago but was persuaded to give it a last chance.

But with Emirates unable to hammer out an engine deal needed to confirm its most recent A380 order, time had finally run out.

.

.

[kscarbel2]

What was termed great, is no longer.....great.

That said, I always enjoy flying on Emirates' A380s.

[kscarbel2]

China, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Australia, Malaysia, Norway. Singapore and Oman ground all Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft

Bloomberg  /  March 11, 2019

Britain, Germany, France, Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands ban Boeing 737 Max 8 from their airspace

A day after Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed and killed all 157 people on board, Africa’s biggest carrier also decided not to use its 737 Max 8 planes until further notice. China ordered its carriers to ground all 96 of the aircraft by 6 p.m. local time. Elsewhere, Indonesia’s air safety regulator said it’s discussing the possibility of grounding the Boeing planes and South Korea began a special inspection of the aircraft.

For Boeing, the latest disaster soon drew comparisons to a Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people, pushing the Chicago-based planemaker a step closer to a crisis. A blanket grounding of the 737 Max, which generates almost one-third of the company’s operating profit, in China also raised the specter of other countries following suit.

“The B737 Max design is dangerously flawed,” said Mohan Ranganathan, a former commercial pilot and an aviation safety consultant based in the southern India city of Chennai. “There is a definite similarity between Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines Max crashes.”

Boeing said it did not intend to issue any new guidance to its customers.

Chinese airlines accounted for 20 percent of 737 Max deliveries worldwide through January, and further purchases of the Chicago-based planemaker’s aircraft are said to have been touted as a possible component of a trade deal with the U.S.

China Southern Airlines has 16 of the aircraft, with another 34 on order. China Eastern Airlines has 13, while Air China Ltd. has 14. Other Chinese airlines that have bought the Max include Hainan Airlines Holdings and Shandong Airlines.

The single-aisle 737 Max is poised to generate about $30 billion in annual revenue as factory output rises to a 57-jet monthly pace this year.

The disaster in Ethiopia followed the crash of Lion Air’s 737 Max off the coast of Indonesia on Oct. 29. A preliminary report into that disaster indicated that pilots struggled to maintain control following an equipment malfunction.

The doomed Ethiopian jetliner left Addis Ababa at 8:38 a.m. local time, and contact was lost six minutes later. There were people from 35 nations on board, including 32 Kenyans, 18 Canadians, nine Ethiopians and eight Americans. The United Nations lost 19 staff members in the crash.

The pilot of the ET302 reported problems shortly after takeoff and was cleared to return to the airport. The 737 Max 8 hadn’t had any apparent mechanical issues on an earlier flight from Johannesburg.

Ethiopian Airlines had five of the planes in operation as of the end of January and orders for a further 25.

Indonesia’s transportation safety committee said Monday it offered to help with the Ethiopian Airlines crash investigation and will discuss the possibility of grounding Boeing 737 Max jets operated by the nation’s airlines. Jet Airways India Ltd. and SpiceJet Ltd., two Indian airlines that use the 737 Max jet, and the country’s regulators have asked Boeing for information following the Ethiopia crash.

Following the Lion Air crash, Boeing faced criticism from some U.S. pilot unions for not having detailed in its flight manual a change in the way that software on the MAX reacts in a stall compared with a previous version.

Boeing was expected to introduce a software patch to help address the scenario faced by the Lion Air crew in late March or April.

Boeing is already facing a string of lawsuits in the United States by families of the Lion Air crash victims, including five cases in U.S. federal court in Illinois where Boeing has its Chicago headquarters.

The 737 MAX 8 uses LEAP-1B engines made by CFM International, a joint venture of General Electric Co and Safran SA.

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Related:

Reuters  /  November 15, 2018

WASHINGTON - American Airlines said on Wednesday it was "unaware" of some functions of an anti-stall system on Boeing Co's 737 MAX until last week.

Boeing and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued guidance on the system last week after a Lion Air jet crashed in Indonesia on Oct. 29, killing all 189 people on board.

The FAA warned airlines last week that erroneous inputs from the system's sensors could lead the jet to automatically pitch its nose down even when autopilot is turned off, making it difficult for pilots to control.

The system was designed to prevent the jet from stalling, according to information provided by Boeing to airlines.

"We value our partnership with Boeing, but were unaware of some of the functionality of the Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) installed on the MAX 8," an American Airlines spokesman said. [Boeing never told American Airlines this rather important nugget of information]

"We must ensure that our pilots are fully trained on procedures and understand key systems on the aircraft they fly."

Indonesian investigators said on Monday the situation the crew of a doomed Lion Air jet was believed to have faced was not contained in the aircraft's flight manual. U.S. pilot unions were also not aware of potential risks, pilot unions told Reuters.

[kscarbel2]

Boeing is having a really bad day.

Now Senators Mitt Romney, Richard Blumenthal and Dianne Feinstein are calling for all 737 MAX 8 aircraft to be grounded until what is obviously a problem has been identified and corrected.

If this was a US military aircraft, the subject aircraft type would have all been grounded already. Why not a civilian aircraft? Answer - Because too much money is at stake.....the wealthy aristocracy that profits from airline investment will lobby against it.

[Mack Technician]

On 12/6/2017 at 9:30 PM, kscarbel2 said:

Please, someone correct me if my loose understanding of the history is incorrect.

The Kingdom of Israel was conquered/destroyed by the Assyrians in 750 BC.

The area went on to be ruled by Babylonia, Persia, Macedonia and Hasmoneans. Then Palestine was created as a colony of the Roman Empire about 2,000 years ago.

After the Roman era, the region was controlled by the Byzantine Empire, Islamic Jihad, Crusaders, Egyptians and finally the Ottoman/Turkish Empire until World War One.

Under a 1922 League of Nations (UN predecessor) mandate, Great Britain drove the Turks out and took control.

In 1948, the Arabs were forced out and Israel was formed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Israel

Best picture of the conflict over that little spec of earth is to wiki Abraham (prophet). It outlines the three branch conflict of religions. The ownership conflict starts with the “covenant” and basically excludes Christians and Muslims, or other people’s group, from ownership. 

Seems kosher (pun intended) except captivity was two parts. The divided kingdom period wasn’t only occupation of Israel (north kingdom). It included Judea(south kingdom), which was also just as much “Israel proper”. The Assyrians captured and enslaved the North. The Babylonians captured and enslaved the South. It was a 70 year dual exile that Daniel, Ezekiel, Esther, etc lived through. 

It’s also a center bridge of the “Fertile Crescent”, so the birthplace of civilizations. Historical gold, so everybody can’t seem to leave their hands off the prize.

Edited March 14, 2019 by Mack Technician

[kscarbel2]

How a 50-year-old design came back to haunt Boeing with its troubled 737 Max jet

Ralph Vartabedian, The Los Angeles Times  /  March 15, 2019

A set of stairs may have never caused so much trouble in an aircraft.

First introduced in West Germany as a short-hop commuter jet in the early Cold War, the Boeing 737-100 had folding metal stairs attached to the fuselage that passengers climbed to board before airports had jetways. Ground crews hand-lifted heavy luggage into the cargo holds in those days, long before motorized belt loaders were widely available.

That low-to-the-ground design was a plus in 1968, but it has proved to be a constraint that engineers modernizing the 737 have had to work around ever since. The compromises required to push forward a more fuel-efficient version of the plane — with larger engines and altered aerodynamics — led to the complex flight control software system that is now under investigation in two fatal crashes over the last five months.

Boeing’s problems deepened Thursday, when the company announced it was stopping delivery of the aircraft after the Federal Aviation Administration’s decision Wednesday to ground the aircraft.

“We continue to build 737 Max airplanes, while assessing how the situation, including potential capacity constraints, will impact our production system,” Boeing said in a statement.

The crisis comes after 50 years of remarkable success in making the 737 a profitable workhorse. Today, the aerospace giant has a massive backlog of more than 4,700 orders for the jetliner and its sales account for nearly a third of Boeing’s profit.

But the decision to continue modernizing the jet, rather than starting at some point with a clean design, resulted in engineering challenges that created unforeseen risks.

“Boeing has to sit down and ask itself how long they can keep updating this airplane," said Douglas Moss, an instructor at USC's Viterbi Aviation Safety and Security Program, a former United Airlines captain, an attorney and a former Air Force test pilot. "We are getting to the point where legacy features are such a drag on the airplane that we have to go to a clean-sheet airplane."

Few, if any, complex products designed in the 1960s are still manufactured today. The IBM 360 mainframe computer was put out to pasture decades ago. The Apollo spacecraft is revered history. The Buick Electra 225 is long gone. And Western Electric dial telephones are seen only in classic movies.

Today’s 737 is a substantially different system from the original. Boeing strengthened its wings, developed new assembly technologies and put in modern cockpit electronics. The changes allowed the 737 to outlive both the Boeing 757 and 767, which were developed decades later and then retired.

Over the years, the FAA has implemented new and tougher design requirements, but a derivative gets many of the designs grandfathered in, Moss said.

“It is cheaper and easier to do a derivative than a new aircraft,” said Robert Ditchey, an engineer, aviation safety consultant and founder of America West Airlines, which purchased some of the early 737 models. “It is easier to certificate it.”

But some aspects of the legacy 737 design are vintage headaches, such as the ground clearance designed to allow a staircase that’s now obsolete. “They wanted it close to the ground for boarding,” Ditchey said.

Andrew Skow, founder of Tiger Century Aircraft, which develops cockpit safety systems, and a former Northrop Grumman chief engineer, said Boeing has had a good record modernizing the 737. But he said, “They may have pushed it too far.”

To handle a longer fuselage and more passengers, Boeing added larger, more powerful engines, but that required it to reposition them to maintain ground clearance. As a result, the 737 can pitch up under certain circumstances. Software, known as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, was added to counteract that tendency.

It was that software that is believed to have been involved in a Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October.

The software erroneously thought the aircraft was at risk of losing lift and stalling — because of a malfunctioning sensor — and ordered the stabilizer at the rear to put it into a series of sharp dives that ultimately caused the plane to crash into the Java Sea.

What happened on the Ethiopian Airlines flight is less clear, but tracking data show that it also encountered sharp changes in its vertical velocity and at one point in its climb after takeoff lost 400 feet of altitude. The FAA grounded the jetliner Wednesday, saying that new satellite data showed the Ethiopian Airlines flight dynamics were “very close” to those of the Lion Air jet.

Ethiopia sent “black box” recording devices recovered from the crashed jet to France for analysis, after refusing to hand them over to U.S. authorities. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board still plans to send investigators to France to help its Bureau of Inquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety.

Airline crashes seldom are caused by a single factor, and the two 737 accidents may yet involve poor maintenance, pilot errors and inadequate training. But it appears increasingly likely that Boeing’s software system and the company’s lack of recommendations for pilot training on it may have played an important role in the crashes.

The entire need for the software system is fundamental to the jet’s history.

The bottom of the 737’s engines are a minimum of 17 inches above the runway. By comparison, the Boeing 757 has a minimum clearance of 29 inches, according to Boeing specification books. The newer 787 Dreamliner has 28 inches or 29 inches, depending on the engine.

The 737 originally was equipped with the Pratt & Whitney JT-8 series jets, which had an inner fan diameter of 49.2 inches. “They looked like cigars, long and skinny,” Moss said.

By comparison, the LEAP-1b engines on the Max 8 have a diameter of 69 inches, nearly 20 inches more than the original. There wouldn’t be enough clearance without some kind of modification.

In the 737-300, which came after the original planes sold in West Germany, Boeing came up with an unusual fix: It created a flat bottom on the nacelle (the shroud around the fan), creating what pilots came to call the "hamster pouch.”

“They made it work,” said Ditchey, whose America West was one of the original customers of the 737-300.

But the LEAP engines required an even bigger change. Boeing redesigned the pylons, the structure that holds the engine to the wing, extending them farther forward and higher up. It gave the needed 17 inches of clearance. The company also put in a higher nose landing gear.

The change, however, affected the plane’s aerodynamics. Boeing discovered the new position of the engines increased the lift of the aircraft, creating a tendency for the nose to pitch up.

The solution was MCAS, which ordered the stabilizer to push down the nose if the “angle of attack” — or angle that air flows over the wings — got too high. The MCAS depends on data from two sensors. But on the Lion Air flight, the MCAS relied on a sensor that was erroneously reporting a high angle of attack when the plane was nowhere near a stall.

The pilots tried to counteract the nose-down movements by pulling back on the yoke. But even pulling with all their might they could not counteract the forces, according to data in a preliminary accident investigation report.

Skow criticized Boeing’s MCAS system, saying it acted only on the basis of angle of attack. The Lion Air jet was traveling so fast that when MCAS ordered the stabilizer to pitch the nose down it was a violent reaction. The software should have factored in air speed, he said, which would have better calibrated the pilots’ reaction.

Skow’s firm has developed a cockpit display system, known as Q-Alfa, which he says would have identified the failure of the angle of attack sensor and allowed the crew to abort the takeoff. “We believe we could have prevented the accident,” he said.

If the results of the investigation do not undermine the fundamental design of the aircraft, then the 737 Max’s future may not be in peril, aviation experts said. It may turn out all that’s needed is a software fix or additional pilot training.

The 737 has survived other crises. In a 1988 accident on a flight between Honolulu and Hilo, the entire top of the plane came off in an explosive decompression. A flight attendant was sucked out and 65 passengers and crew were injured. It was blamed on faulty lap joints in the aluminum skin of the fuselage, which Boeing re-engineered.

[kscarbel2]

Pilots transitioning to the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft from older 737 models were given a short, self-administered online course that made no mention of the new MCAS software system now at the center of two crash investigations, say pilots' unions spokesmen for Southwest Airlines and American Airlines.

Pilots of Southwest Airlines and American Airlines took courses -- lasting between 56 minutes and three hours -- that highlighted differences between the Max 8 and older 737s, but did not explain the new maneuvering characteristics augmentation system (MCAS).

"The course was not instructor-led. It was self-administered," said Southwest Airlines union spokesman Mike Trevino. The set course took pilots approximately three hours to complete, he said. The 8,500 pilots of Southwest Airlines exclusively fly the 737, and it is the world's largest operator of the 737 Max 8, employing 34 of the aircraft.

"MCAS was installed in the aircraft and Boeing didn't disclose that to the pilots," said Trevino.

[kscarbel2]

FAA knew of Boeing jet risk

The Wall Street Journal  /  July 31, 2019

Federal Aviation Authority regulators knew the Boeing 737 MAX could malfunction again after the fatal Lion Air crash.

An internal report following last October’s accident said that it “didn’t take that much” for it to happen. Boeing then allegedly warned pilots of the risk, thinking this would leave the company enough time to fix the glitch without grounding any of the jets. But a second fatal crash in March precipitated the grounding of the entire fleet.

[kscarbel2]

Drunk Delta Pilots

August 1, 2019

MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — A Delta pilot was removed from a fully-boarded plane and arrested Tuesday following an investigation that led authorities to believe he was under the influence of alcohol.

Gabriel Lyle Schroeder, 37, of Rosemount, was arrested at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport and is awaiting the possibility of formal charges.

Schroeder was seen leaving a TSA screening line for crew members after he noticed additional screening was taking place. He later returned, raising the suspicions of airport authorities.

When Schroeder was arrested, the plane was fully boarded but had not left the gate. A container of alcohol was found on Schroeder after the arrest. Authorities are awaiting toxicology results before a formal complaint is filed.

[kscarbel2]

Drunk United Pilots

August 4, 2019

A flight from Glasgow, Scotland, to Newark, New Jersey, was canceled Saturday after two pilots were arrested on suspicion of being intoxicated, according to officials with United Airlines and Scottish Police.

Police Scotland say the two men were arrested at the airport before boarding in relation to a law that bans "carrying out pilot functions or activity while exceeding the prescribed limit of alcohol."

The men, aged 61 and 45, "have been arrested and remain in police custody pending a court appearance on Tuesday 6th August 2019," police said.

Both pilots were "immediately removed from service," a United Airlines spokesman Jonathan Guerin said.

Flight UA162 was subsequently canceled after the arrests and passengers were re-booked on alternate flights.

[kscarbel2]

Wall Street Journal  /  December 11, 2019

U.S. regulators decided to allow Boeing’s 737 MAX jet to keep flying after its first fatal crash last fall even when their own analysis indicated it could become one of the most accident-prone airliners in decades without design changes.

An internal Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) internal analysis dated November 2018, released during a House committee hearing Wednesday, projected that without design changes, a 737 Max aircraft could be expected to crash every two to three years, i.e. the FAA predicted there would be more than 15 additional fatal 737 Max crashes over its lifetime.

However, FAA regulators, decided to let the plane continue flying.............

[kscarbel2]

"Those" are two big engines.

.

 

[kscarbel2]

Reuters  /  February 18, 2020

SEATTLE - Boeing Co found debris that could pose potential safety risks in the fuel tanks of several 737 MAX aircraft that are in storage and waiting to be delivered to airlines, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

Foreign object debris, an industrial term for rags, tools, metal shavings and other materials left behind by workers during the production process, has been a quality control issue for various Boeing aircraft, such as its KC-46 tankers.

Mark Jenks, general manager of the 737 program, told employees in the memo that such debris was “absolutely unacceptable”.

A Boeing spokesman confirmed the memo’s authenticity.

[kscarbel2]

Reuters  /  April 17, 2020

U.S. airlines are estimated to be sitting on more than $10 billion in travel vouchers that should have been cash refunds from canceled flights, a group of senators released on Friday.

Many U.S. airlines are cancelling between 60% and 80% of their flights, and under federal law passengers on those flights are entitled to full refunds, Senators Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal said.

"However, many airlines have been obfuscating this right by offering travel vouchers as the default option, requiring passengers to take burdensome steps to request refunds instead," they said.

The senators had asked Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Sun Country Airlines, and United Airlines to each provide details on their refund policies during the pandemic.

In the airline replies, most refused to share the total value of the travel vouchers and credits they have issued during the pandemic.

But JetBlue, which has 5.5% of the domestic market share, said it issued over $20 million per day of travel credits to consumers in the first few weeks of March.

"Assuming a similar trend throughout the industry over the last month, this figure could mean that the airlines are sitting on more than $10 billion in customer cash," the lawmakers said, while inviting airlines to provide more information if they dispute the figure.

According to their findings, airlines are offering cash refunds when the company itself cancels a flight, as required by the U.S. Transportation Department, but only Allegiant and Spirit are offering refunds to passengers who voluntarily cancel their own tickets.

"None of the biggest carriers with the most revenue, including United, American, Delta, and Southwest, offer similar refunds," it said.

U.S. airlines are set to soon receive $25 billion in government payroll aid, much of it in the form of free cash, and can also apply for another $25 billion in government loans to help them weather the coronavirus downturn.

Two weeks ago, the Transportation Department issued a notice to airlines reminding them they are obligated to refund tickets when they cancel a flight or make a significant flight schedule change that passengers opt not to accept, but did not take any immediate action against airlines.