| From: Eric | 7/14/2024 12:43:46 PM | | | | | | Boeing & Aerospace
Business
Nation
Boeing 777X finally gets FAA green light for certification flights
July 13, 2024 at 12:24 pm Updated July 13, 2024 at 1:03 pm
The 777-9X takes off for its first certification flight test Friday from Boeing Field near Seattle. (Marian Lockhart / Boeing)
By
Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
In an important milestone in the development of Boeing’s new 777X commercial jet, the Federal Aviation Administration has granted authority to begin a sequence of test flights needed to win approval for the 777X to enter passenger service.
For these tests, FAA pilots and engineers will be on board the new large airplane alongside Boeing’s pilots and flight test team.
They will observe firsthand how the jet performs in a series of rigorous maneuvers far beyond what a commercial jet normally encounters.
Boeing test pilots conducted the first certification flight test Friday evening with FAA personnel aboard the aircraft. It took off from Boeing Field just after 6 p.m. and landed there again almost two hours later after flying along the Washington and Oregon coast.
The news is a major boost for Boeing. It should unlock new orders for the aircraft, sales of which have been stalled by yearslong delays in its development and lack of progress toward getting it certified to fly passengers.
The news comes just a week before the Farnborough Air Show opens near London, where Reuters reported Boeing is expected to announce at least one new 777X order, for more than 20 of the jets from Korean Air.
Over the next year to 18 months, Boeing must put the plane through a series of demanding flight tests on four separate test aircraft to demonstrate to the FAA that the 777X can be certified as satisfying all safety regulations.
Boeing has been flying the plane for more than four years and the FAA has insisted until now that more analysis was needed. Now finally, it’s ready to fly for credit.
The 777X is an upgraded and larger version of the all-metal 777 twinjet that debuted in the mid-1990s.
It features new engines and new carbon composite wings, so long that Boeing had to design 11-foot-long wingtips that fold up so the plane can fit at standard airport gates.
The first version, now being tested, is the 777-9X, which will carry 426 passengers in two-class seating on long-haul international flights.
A slightly smaller model, the 777-8X, will follow later in both freighter and passenger variants.
Boeing has won 481 orders for the aircraft to date, with Gulf carrier Emirates by far the largest customer, with just over 200 on order.
With Airbus having discontinued its A380 superjumbo jet for lack of sales, the 777X is now the largest new commercial jet available to airlines.
In addition to the four test airplanes, Boeing has already built and stored 22 of the 777X jets, many of those parked nose-to-tail on a runway at Paine Field with large blocks hanging from their wings in place of engines.
Another six are in various stages of assembly in Everett, according to a reliable online list of production airplanes.
All of those jets built before certification is achieved will have to be reworked with any changes developed during the flight test program before they can be delivered to airlines.
Long delays in developmentIn the past, new Boeing jets were generally certified and cleared to enter service within 18 months of first flight. The original 777 was certified almost exactly a year after it first flew in 1994.
The 777X was launched at the Dubai Air Show in 2013, first flew in January 2020 and now it looks like it could get certified in the second half of 2025, an unprecedented length of time to develop a derivative of an existing airplane.
By this point, Boeing said it has already put the 777-9X test fleet through “more than 1,200 flights and 3,500 flight hours across a wide range of regions and climate conditions.”
Now it must repeat many of those tests for the FAA to observe, including in-flight stalls, deliberate tail strikes and aborted takeoffs at full weight and speed.
“The certification flight testing will continue validating the airplane’s safety, reliability and performance,” Boeing said via email. “We appreciate our regulator’s rigorous oversight.”
Indeed, the FAA has never been more rigorous.
The 777X’s development was caught up in the tougher regulatory scrutiny of Boeing’s products that followed two fatal crashes of its 737 MAX jets in 2018 and 2019 that combined killed 346 people.
The FAA and European regulators demanded extensive testing and redesign of several 777X components, including a critical avionics system that governs the movement of flight control surfaces on the jet’s wings and tail.
In a scathing letter three years ago, 17 months after the jet’s first flight, the FAA told Boeing it wasn’t nearly ready. Boeing’s safety assessments lacked data, software fixes were missing and Boeing was introducing new design changes.
The FAA wrote then that its “concern is due to the addition of late changes; Boeing needs to ensure the changes do not introduce new, inadvertent failures.”
Boeing was ordered to “close these gaps” before even requesting that the FAA allow certification flight testing to begin.
Three years later, the FAA is now satisfied and Boeing can finally move forward.
In what has been a bleak year for Boeing, it’s a much-needed lift.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com; Dominic Gates is a Pulitzer Prize-winning aerospace journalist for The Seattle Times.
seattletimes.com |
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| From: John Koligman | 7/18/2024 12:52:55 PM | | | | | | "From 2010 to 2019, Boeing spent $68 billion on stock buybacks and dividends, according to Melius Research analyst Rob Spingarn."
That number caught my eye. I bet they would love to have had that cash available today, when they are burning it at a significant rate.
Can Boeing get back to its glory days?
PUBLISHED THU, JUL 18 20246:00 AM EDTUPDATED 57 MIN AGO
Leslie Josephs @LESLIEJOSEPHS
KEY POINTS
- Boeing’s leaders say they have charted a path forward to stamp out safety and manufacturing flaws on its best-selling planes.
- Plans include better oversight, improved safety and manufacturing procedures, more robust worker training, and buying back a key supplier.
- Industry watchers and insiders say a string of decisions stretching back decades led to the problems at the longtime touchstone of American manufacturing quality and innovation.
In this article
An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight from Los Angeles approaches for landing at Reagan National Airport shortly after an announcement was made by the FAA that the planes were being grounded by the United States in Washington, U.S.
Joshua Roberts | Reuters
Boeing executives spent years after two fatal 737 Max crashes trying to convince Wall Street, regulators, airlines and the flying public that they had an eagle eye on quality, reliability and safety.
Then on Jan. 5, about six minutes and 16,000 feet into a packed flight out of Portland, Oregon, a door plug blew out of a nearly new Boeing 737 Max 9. The panel was missing key bolts that hold it in place, which the company had removed to fix damaged rivets, according to early accident reports.
No one was seriously injured, but the harrowing flight jolted Boeing’s leaders back into crisis mode. It also reignited scrutiny and skepticism from the same groups the iconic plane-maker spent years trying to win back after the two Max crashes.
Now Boeing’s leaders say they have charted a path forward to fix the company: Better oversight, improved safety and manufacturing procedures, and more robust training for workers, many of them new hires after pandemic-era buyouts and layoffs of thousands of employees.
Boeing this month unveiled a long-awaited deal to buy back its troubled fuselage supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, in a bid to help stamp out production flaws.
A week later, Boeing said it reached a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government tied to the fatal 737 Max crashes. Attorneys representing crash victims’ families blasted the agreement as a “sweetheart” deal. If approved by a federal judge, it would allow Boeing to avoid a potentially lengthy and costly criminal trial, though it would also brand Boeing as a felon.
“This past January, the facade quite literally blew off the hollow shell that had been Boeing’s promises to the world,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in testimony for a Senate panel hearing he called last month, where Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun was roasted by lawmakers.
The fuselage plug area of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, Boeing 737 Max 9, which was forced to make an emergency landing with a gap in the fuselage, is seen during its investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Portland, Oregon, U.S. January 7, 2024.
NTSB | Via Reuters
Industry watchers and insiders say a string of decisions stretching back decades — from a 1997 merger to outsourcing — led to the problems at the longtime touchstone of American manufacturing quality and innovation. Boeing employs some 170,000 people, and its products have landed everywhere from the Maldives to the moon.
Even with its road map in hand, fixing its problems and restoring Boeing’s reputation will take years — and it won’t be cheap.
And Boeing still has plenty of people to convince.
Boeing hasn’t posted an annual profit since 2018, and the plane maker’s shares have tumbled about 30% this year while the broader market rallied. Its stock closed at a high of $440.62 in March 2019, days before the second Max crash. It now trades closer to $185 per share.
Boeing finance chief Brian West told investors in May that the company expects to burn, rather than generate, cash this year, some $8 billion in the first half of 2024. It reports quarterly results on July 31.
“This company is more important than a few quarters of Wall Street,” Aengus Kelly, CEO of aircraft leasing giant AerCap, a major Boeing customer, said in an interview in the spring. “It has to be nurtured and rebuilt.”
Boeing will be back on the global stage next week during the biennial Farnborough Airshow in the United Kingdom, one of the world’s largest aircraft shows. But the manufacturer will have a muted presence: It’s not sending its yet-to-be-certified 777X, 737 Max 7 or Max 10 planes as Boeing employees focus on the fixing problems at home rather than showcase its new planes as it did during past air shows.
Delayed deliveries
Boeing began 2024 fresh from a surge in annual jetliner sales and a jump in deliveries, welcome tallies that appeared to show the company was turning a corner after the fatal dives of two 737 Maxes in 2018 and 2019 that killed all 346 people on the flights.
But the Jan. 5 door plug blowout on Flight 1282, operated by Boeing’s crosstown customer Alaska Airlines, brought a swift response from regulators. The Federal Aviation Administration barred Boeing from increasing output of its Max planes and stepped up hands-on inspections at production plants. The FAA said in March that its audit found “non-compliance issues in Boeing’s manufacturing process control, parts handling and storage, and product control.”
Its production limitations have exacerbated delivery delays for Boeing customers, a slowdown that’s impacting its commercial jet business, as airlines pay the bulk of a plane’s price when they receive it. That division accounted for more than 43% of Boeing’s nearly $78 billion in revenue last year.
In the first half of 2024, Boeing delivered 175 airplanes, compared with the 323 aircraft that Airbus handed over during the same period. The two companies dominate the commercial jet market.
Leaders at the top of major airlines from Emirates to Southwest have aired their frustration with the jet maker as deliveries run behind schedule. Southwest, United and American have blamed slowdowns in hiring and changed flight plans on Boeing’s delays.
“Boeing needs to become a better company,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said at a JPMorgan industry conference in March, an uncharacteristically strong comment from the leader of the all-Boeing 737 airline.
Even if planes arrive late, compensation doesn’t often make up for the shortfall of jets.
“I’m not in the compensation business. I’m the airline business,” Etihad Airways CEO Antonoaldo Neves said in an interview.
WATCH NOW
VIDEO15:04
Why the Boeing 737 Max has been such a mess
Tight supply at both Boeing and Airbus makes shifting orders over to the European company nearly impossible. Both companies are sold out of narrow-body planes through almost the end of the decade. Boeing has an order book of more than 5,400 jetliners, after accounting adjustments, while Airbus has about 8,000 unfilled orders.
And Airbus isn’t on solid ground either, warning customers and investors last month that supply chain problems will slow its planned ramp up in production and slow deliveries.
Earlier this year as airline executives’ patience wore thin, they sought meetings with Boeing’s board chairman, people familiar with the matter said.
Shortly afterward, Boeing in March announced a l eadership shake-up, with the head of its all-important commercial airplane unit replaced. CEO Calhoun, an alumnus of General Electric and Blackstone, said he would step down by the end of the year. Boeing replaced its chairman, too, installing ex-Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf.
Boeing hasn’t yet named a replacement for Calhoun. The CEO of Spirit AeroSystems, Pat Shanahan, who previously worked at Boeing and served as former deputy secretary and acting secretary of defense under former President Donald Trump, is considered a strong contender.
Across the airline industry, executives publicly and privately say they would rather Boeing take the time to fix problems than face prolonged uncertainty over when new planes will be delivered.
Long history
The 108-year old Boeing has a firm place in American history. Its bombers were crucial in World War II. It has built presidential aircraft. Former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump have each held events at Boeing 787 Dreamliner factories. And in space, a Boeing-built rocket propelled Apollo 11 to the moon in 1969.
Most of the general public knows Boeing as the company to usher in the jet age. It designed and launched four aircraft in just over a decade, including the first 737.
The narrow-body plane was soon dwarfed by Boeing’s groundbreaking and more glamorous jumbo jet, the 747, which could fit more than 500 people, and in some configurations, a piano bar. The 737 was dubbed “Baby Boeing” and went on to become the company’s bestseller, helping to make Boeing the largest U.S. exporter. It has built more than 11,000 of the 737s to date.
“Without Boeing, the world is a worse place,” AerCap’s Kelly said.
But within a five-month span in 2018 and 2019, two Max 8 planes crashed: one in Indonesia operated by Lion Air that plunged into the Java Sea, killing the 189 people on board; and one operated by Ethiopian Airlines that crashed shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa, killing the 157 people on that flight.
Pilots in those Boeing planes fought against a flight-control system, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, that pushed the nose of the planes downward repeatedly. The Department of Justice later alleged the company misled the FAA about the system, the charge to which Boeing ultimately agreed to plead guilty.
Rescuers work at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Monday, March 11, 2019.
Mulugeta Ayene | Reuters
Last year, it looked like Boeing was back on a better footing.
“I have heard those outside our company wondering if we’ve lost a step. I view it as quite the opposite,” Calhoun said in note to employees last October.
Months later, the powerful blast from the Alaska Airlines door plug blowout ripped off head rests, seatbacks and the first officer’s headset, leaving a gaping hole in row 26. The incident terrified passengers and exposed the most serious in a series of quality control issues on Boeing jets. Previous issues included mis-drilled holes and incorrect spacing on some of Boeing fuselages.
The manufacturer’s production portfolio includes a host of jets that are regularly flown commercially around the world: the workhorse 737, the wide-body 787 Dreamliner, and soon, once approved by regulators, the 777X.
And while production flaws make headlines, Boeing jets continue to carry travelers safely around the world, with more than 13,000 at the end of last year. The company has a 45% market share of commercial jets currently flying, according to AeroDynamic Advisory.
Across all of its divisions, its customers also include the U.S. and foreign militaries, and NASA — and some of those units haven’t been without issue either.
“Our airplanes have carried the equivalent of more than double the population of the planet,” Calhoun said in testimony to a Senate panel last month for a hearing titled “Boeing’s Broken Safety Culture.”
“Getting this right is critical for our company, for the customers who fly our planes every day, and for our country,” he said. He apologized during the hearing to the family members of the Lion Air and Ethiopian crash victims, as they held posters with pictures of lost loved ones.
WATCH NOW
VIDEO02:07
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun apologizes to families of crash victims
Cost-cutting proves costly
Critics say a yearslong push to reward Boeing shareholders and lower costs came at the expense of building totally new aircraft, in favor of updating older models. Boeing also outsourced production of key parts to suppliers that it increasingly put under pressure to deliver, exposing the supply chain to potential flaws.
United CEO Scott Kirby told CNBC in January that he believes the issues date back to Boeing’s merger with competing airplane manufacturer McDonnell Douglas in 1997. The tie-up is often cited as a turning point for Boeing that replaced its once engineering-led culture with a greater focus on returns.
From 2010 to 2019, Boeing spent $68 billion on stock buybacks and dividends, according to Melius Research analyst Rob Spingarn.
“This is a long time building,” Kirby said.
BOZEMAN, MT - MARCH 12: Boeing 737 Max 8 fuselages manufactured by Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, Kansas are transported on a BSNF train heading west over the Bozeman Pass March 12, 2019 in Bozeman, Montana.
William Campbell | Corbis News | Getty Images
In 2001, Boeing moved its corporate headquarters from its original home in Seattle to Chicago, farther away from the factory floors where it had built aircraft since the early 20th century. In 2022, it moved headquarters again to Arlington, Virginia.
In 2005, Boeing sold its Wichita division that makes fuselages for many of its planes to a private equity firm for just under $1 billion. That spinoff would eventually become Spirit AeroSystems, which Boeing is now buying back for about $4.7 billion plus debt.
And in 2020, Boeing said it would consolidate 787 Dreamliner production in South Carolina, more than 2,400 miles away from its other manufacturing facilities in Washington state, including where the Dreamliners were previously built. It also outsourced parts production to a network of suppliers.
Those moves have been put under a microscope in recent years as Boeing disclosed recurring production flaws. Allegations from whistleblowers at the company and at Spirit have claimed Boeing was cutting corners in production.
WATCH NOW
VIDEO13:41
Why Boeing wants to buy back Spirit AeroSystems
Calhoun, when asked about outsourcing production to Spirit, told CNBC in January: “Did it go too far? Yeah ... probably did, but now it’s here and now I gotta deal with it.”
Flaws on its planes have cost Boeing billions of dollars due to periods of production drops, delivery pauses and compensation to customers.
Turning a page
Boeing does say that it’s on the right track.
For one, it’s been forced to slow production of its planes. While painful in the near term because it drives up costs and deprives the company of new planes to hand over to customers, executives say it’s the way to make sure manufacturing flaws don’t reappear.
Jefferies estimates Boeing produced about 24 Max jets a month in the second quarter and could move to roughly 35 a month in the last three months of the year. Boeing has said it aims to increase rates to about 50 Max planes a month in the next few years.
It’s also brought employees into the recovery effort. The company has held so-called “stand-downs” at its factories to pause work and discuss problems on the line.
And its plea deal with the DOJ, if approved by a judge in the coming weeks, could allow the company to settle a federal probe with a roughly $244 million fine and a probationary period of three years, during which time an independent monitor would oversee quality control, and other conditions.
Boeing’s CEO Dave Calhoun and chief engineer Howard McKenzie turn to face those who lost loved ones in fatal crashes as they testify before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Investigations Subcommittee hearing on the safety culture at Boeing, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 18, 2024.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
“We are taking comprehensive action today to strengthen safety and quality,” Calhoun said in his testimony before the Senate panel last month. “And, we know, as America’s premier aerospace manufacturer, this is what you and the flying public have every right to expect from us.”
Goldman Sachs aerospace analyst Noah Poponak said Boeing can “still make a product that’s a total marvel. If they can get their act together, I think their reputation can improve quickly.”
Promoting and building up the Boeing workforce will be key in the coming years, according to Alex Krutz, managing director of Patriot Industrial Partners, an aerospace consulting firm.
The company has more competition for new workers than in previous generations in the Seattle area, he said, because of rapid expansion of tech companies there in the past few decades, as well as engineering competition from the private space industry.
“Companies thrive or don’t based on leadership,” he said.
WATCH NOW
VIDEO22:22
The rise and fall of the Boeing 747
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, District 751, which represents some 30,000 Boeing technicians in Washington State and Oregon, is currently in contract negotiations with company, seeking more than 40% raises and a seat on Boeing’s board.
“We have more leverage than we’ve ever had in our history,” said Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751. “There’s massive demand for new airplanes.”
Some analysts say designing a new plane could help attract talent and set the company up for years to come, a project that was largely set to the backburner after the crashes.
The advice of Richard Aboulafia, an longtime aerospace analyst and a managing director at AeroDynamic Advisory is simple: “Begin a new program, and say, ‘We’re a company with a future.’” |
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| From: Eric | 7/20/2024 2:42:49 PM | | | | | | Boeing & Aerospace
Business
With aviation’s future clouded, Airbus looks forward. Boeing holds on
July 20, 2024 at 8:00 am Updated July 20, 2024 at 8:00 am
Boeing isn’t sending any aircraft to the Farnborough Air Show, opening Monday in London. Instead, it’s hunkering down to get production back in shape at home. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
By
Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
LONDON, England — At the aviation world’s biggest event of the year, the Farnborough Air Show opening Monday outside London, the contrasting fortunes of Airbus and Boeing will be on stark display.
Airbus will talk about the industrywide supply challenges causing it to delay jet deliveries but also reach forward to describe future airplanes and technologies, including as-yet-unrealized plans for climate-friendly air travel.
Parts shortages have forced the European planemaker to cut its projected jet deliveries this year by nearly 4%. Yet it will capture attention at Farnborough by flying its new long-range single-aisle jet, the A321XLR.
That aircraft seems set to further enhance Airbus’ dominance of the smaller jet sector when it enters service this fall.
In contrast, Boeing, in the throes of a reputation crisis, has dramatically shrunk its participation in the air show.
Boeing said it has reduced its presence at Farnborough to focus on “strengthening safety and quality” and delivering airplanes back at home.
How the Airbus A321neo has run away with the large single-aisle jet market
The single-aisle jet market is reflected in the current order backlogs of Airbus and Boeing. Airbus has an advantage at the smaller end of this sector with its new A220 jet. In the middle, Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 is doing very well against the A320neo. But in the larger single-aisle jet segment, sales of the A321neo easily eclipse those of Boeing’s MAX 9 and MAX 10 models.
Source: Airbus and Boeing figures as of the end of June (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)
It’s not bringing any commercial jets to the air show. New commercial airplanes division boss Stephanie Pope will take press questions on the eve of the show, but otherwise, Boeing is limiting media access.
While Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury gave an advance interview that trade magazine Aviation Week has published before every European air show for 18 years, outgoing Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun pulled out of his interview at the last minute.
That prompted Aviation Week editor-in-chief Joe Anselmo to write a frustrated editorial on “Boeing’s leadership vacuum” and “the company’s decline from an American industrial jewel to a punch line for comedians.”
With nothing to say on future strategy, Boeing hopes to announce some 787 and 777X widebody jet orders to make the show at least a sales success.
Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun, center, arrives for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing in Washington, D.C., on June 18. Staggering through five years of... (Graeme Sloan / Bloomberg)
Waiting for clarity from Boeing
Staggering through five years of turmoil since the two deadly 737 MAX crashes and set back again this year when a fuselage hole opened up during an Alaska Airlines flight, Boeing is leaving any description of its longer-term path forward to Calhoun’s yet-to-be-appointed successor as CEO.
Before the new boss comes in to map that future out, the current leadership aims to clear the deck of three major obstacles.
One, the acquisition of the Spirit AeroSystems facilities in Kansas and Oklahoma that make Boeing parts, is now agreed upon. And Boeing has accepted the Department of Justice plea deal related to the 737 MAX crashes. That leaves the Machinists union contract — and a potential strike in September — to be settled.
At a pre-Farnborough press briefing in June, Boeing Senior Vice President Elizabeth Lund focused solely on the current crisis and recapped the efforts to prevent another random quality lapse that could cause an in-flight scare like the Alaska fuselage blowout in January.
“I feel very confident that it will not happen again,” Lund said then.
Andy Cronin, CEO of leading airplane lessor Avolon, said in an interview that based on recent conversations with Pope and her team, he’s been “positively surprised” at her drive to improve the company’s culture.
“They’re doing the right things, and we think they will get there,” Cronin said.
But he said the CEO transition creates pervasive uncertainty.
“We’re keen to see the transition … announced as soon as possible,” Cronin said.
Until a new CEO takes over, Boeing is paralyzed, unable to lay out its future direction even at aviation’s version of a Super Bowl party.
Airbus is looking forward.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, speaks at an earnings news conference in Toulouse, France, in February. In late June, Airbus cut its planned production for the year from 800 to 770 jets, citing delays in the supply... (Matthieu Rondel / Bloomberg)
As post-pandemic demand for air travel continues to soar, and, despite the supply chain challenges, Airbus’ target is still to raise A320 jet family production from 45 aircraft a month now to 75 — though it just pushed that goal out from 2026 to 2027.
Boeing’s rival MAX jet is struggling to get to a rate of 38 aircraft per month by the end of the year; the only announced target beyond that is 50 per month in 2026.
The newly certified A321XLR jet, which should begin service between Boston and Madrid this fall, provides something new to discuss.
It can fly farther than Boeing’s out-of-production 757 and could potentially change the pattern of air travel on transatlantic and other medium-haul routes.
Still, Airbus must also address at Farnborough the major challenge the entire industry faces right now.
That’s a widespread shortage of labor and parts since the COVID-19 pandemic, from jet engines to airliner seats. This has caused constant delays in delivering jets, frustrating airlines that want more planes.
1 of 5 | A 777X flight test aircraft at Boeing’s Everett Delivery Center on June 26. Boeing this month began flying the 777X for certification flight tests. (Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times)
Repairing the broken supply chain
The order books for single-aisle jets are relatively full, though the A321XLR will likely add to them. Otherwise, airlines are expected to ring up significant sales of big widebody jets at Farnborough.
An order from South Korea for more than 20 of Boeing’s new Everett-built 777X is expected. A big Turkish Airlines order for MAXs and 787s may also come through.
The 777X, the world’s largest commercial jet currently built, got a boost on July 13 when the Federal Aviation Administration gave Boeing the green light to begin certification flights on the four 777X test planes based at Boeing Field.
Yet sales are less important this year, as both Airbus and Boeing have orders to keep them busy through most of this decade.
The industry focus is more on how production can meet demand, given labor and parts shortages.
For Boeing, production is very low and can rise only slowly as it must first meet quality standards imposed by the FAA after the blowout on the Alaska Airlines flight.
Boeing 777 freighters and a 777X are under assembly at the widebody jet plant in Everett on June 26. The 777X, the world’s largest commercial jet currently built, got a boost in mid-July when... (Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times)
And Airbus last month cut its forecast delivery for the year from 800 jets to 770, citing shortages of engines, cabin interiors and some airframe parts.
“We have to manage a large number of crises with suppliers, significantly more than what we had before COVID-19,” Airbus CEO Faury told Aviation Week, adding that Airbus is sending “multiple times more people to the plants of our suppliers” to try and fix the cascading problems.
“The production side is more relevant than ever,” said aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory.
With Boeing production rates suppressed and Airbus now delivering so many more jets, he said the European planemaker is positioned to grab more of the scarce supplier capacity.
In a panel discussion at the show, Airbus supply chain chief Delphine Bazaud and her Boeing counterpart Ihssane Mounir will outline their efforts to repair their supplier networks.
The Airbus A321XLR flies at the Berlin Air Show in June. The XLR, which threatens to further secure the dominance of the A320 jet family over Boeing’s 737 MAX, will fly each afternoon at the Farnborough. Air Show. (Courtesy of Airbus)
The star airplane at the show
The A321XLR, which Airbus test pilots will fly every afternoon at the air show, is not just another variant of an already wildly successful airplane. It could open new international routes.
The A321neo, the largest of the Airbus single-aisle jet family has already won a staggering 6,422 orders as of the end of last month, with about 1,400 already delivered to airlines.
This jet’s success rests largely on the lack of Boeing competition to match it. Yes, Boeing has a stretch version of the 737 MAX, the MAX 10, that’s a similar size. But it has a much shorter range and won’t be certified to fly passengers until 2026 at the earliest.
The A321neo is “the biggest and most capable single-aisle jet you could buy,” said Aboulafia. “In the absence of Boeing doing anything even remotely in this segment, it’s very compelling.”
Boeing did consider launching a jet that would have been larger and with greater range, dubbed the “New Midmarket Airplane.” But at the end of 2022, CEO Calhoun definitively dropped that project and announced publicly that there would be no all-new Boeing jet this decade.
With that, airlines realized there was nothing to wait for, no other game in town, and A321neo sales took off. Airbus had sold 425 of them in 2022. The following year, A321neo sales tripled to 1,286 jets.
“The best year for A321neo sales, by a huge margin, was the 12 months after Calhoun said Boeing wouldn’t be doing anything,” Aboulafia said. “He’s the very best CEO that Airbus could ask for.”
Airbus is now doubling down on the A321neo’s success with the A321XLR, featuring a new built-in, additional fuel tank.
The significance of the A321XLR is that it can fly nonstop not just transatlantic but from the interior of the U.S. to airports deep within Europe.
Expensive twin-aisle widebody jets like the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A330 currently ply such routes. Now a low-cost carrier can do it with a single-aisle aircraft that is much cheaper to operate.
And because it’s smaller, it can be used on routes with fewer passengers. While British Airways can fly big jets from London to New York, a low-cost airline could now open a new nonstop route, say Cincinnati to Rome, flying an A321XLR.
Most passengers won’t relish the idea of long flights in a narrowbody airplane with one aisle. Still, cost will count for the passenger as well as the airline. With more than 500 orders placed before it is certified, the XLR is already a success.
“Airbus did some new engineering. It opens new possibilities,” said longtime analyst Adam Pilarski of consulting firm Avitas. “As a flyer, I’m not super happy about it, but, yeah, it may change realities.”
What does this mean for sales of the MAX 10?
It will do fine. Boeing has sold more than 1,000 of them. For airlines that want a bigger jet but don’t need it to fly routes longer than transcontinental, it makes perfect sense.
Alaska Airlines sold off the A321neos it inherited from the 2016 merger with Virgin America and is all in on the MAX 10.
But Alaska is the only airline with that stance. Other airlines that ordered the MAX 10, including American and United, are adding the A321XLR too.
At a pre-air show briefing at Boeing’s Everett widebody jet delivery center in June, Tia Benson-Tolle, senior director of technology and sustainability product development, holds up a container... (Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times)
Flying cars, hydrogen power and sustainability
The big European air shows, Farnborough and Paris in alternate years, have been abuzz in recent years with talk of sustainable aviation and flying cars — electric air taxis that take off and land vertically.
Farnborough should provide a reality check on these futuristic ambitions. Industry observers are looking for results. For sustainable aviation, there’s little to show so far for a lot of investment.
Low-carbon sustainable aviation fuel, touted at multiple air shows as essential to meeting the airline industry’s goal of being carbon neutral by 2050, has been produced in only minuscule quantities.
Sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, is jet fuel produced from renewable resources. It burns in a jet engine similar to current jet fuel, emitting a similar amount of carbon dioxide. But considering the entire life cycle of the product, the carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere should be minimal.
For the world’s major airlines to achieve their climate protection goals, they need SAF produced affordably and in large quantities.
The airline industry projects that SAF can contribute nearly two-thirds of the reduction needed to meet its sustainability goal.
“SAF is key to getting to net zero,” said Jim Hileman, Boeing vice president and chief engineer for sustainability at a pre-Farnborough briefing last month.
Yet after several years of effort to scale up production through multimillion-dollar investments, Hileman conceded that last year SAF amounted to about 0.1% of all the aviation fuel burned worldwide.
Can that fuel gauge needle rise enough in 2024 to keep aviation’s climate goal within reach?
At the show, both Airbus and California startup ZeroAvia, which has a propulsion research facility in Everett, will describe their development work on a separate decarbonization technology: hydrogen-powered airplanes.
They’ll face more skepticism following the liquidation last month of another startup. Universal Hydrogen, which last year flew a hydrogen-powered aircraft in Moses Lake in Central Washington, burned through $100 million and couldn’t raise more funding.
As for the flying cars, various startups have conducted impressive test flights of prototype air taxis. The technology looks super cool.
In this new aviation niche, one financed by Silicon Valley venture capital and Gulf oil money, leading American air taxi developer Joby is promising commercial service in the U.S. next year while rival Archer has announced a plan to create an air taxi network in the San Francisco Bay Area.
But no air taxis are certified by safety regulators yet. And though Joby and others will have mock-ups of their air taxis on display in an exhibition hall at the show, not one of the many such electric flying machines in development will fly at Farnborough.
Is that future really so close?
The most advanced of the companies developing this technology say they want to focus on completing flight tests and certifying the air taxis rather than taking time to give a flying display at an air show.
Leaders from multiple air taxi startups, including Joby, will be at the air show to provide updates. Their message: The future is coming soon.
That may be true of Boeing too. But for now, the U.S. jetmaker’s future is on hold.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com; Dominic Gates is a Pulitzer Prize-winning aerospace journalist for The Seattle Times.
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| From: Eric | 7/21/2024 1:54:11 PM | | | | | | Boeing & Aerospace
Business
Boeing Commercial boss sticks to message, leaves big issues to next CEO
July 21, 2024 at 9:35 am
Stephanie Pope, CEO of Boeing’s New Commercial Airplanes division, attends a press conference in Le Bourget, north of Paris, France, June 20, 2023. (Lewis Joly / AP, 2023)
By
Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
LONDON — When the CEOs of Boeing’s three divisions — commercial airplanes, defense and services — appeared before the press on the eve of the Farnborough Air Show, they stuck to a tight script confined to a single message: They are all focused exclusively on improving safety and quality.
They waved off questions about future strategy, about moving the headquarters back to Seattle, about where Boeing’s next all-new jet will be built.
New Commercial Airplanes chief, Stephanie Pope, who is four months into the job, said she is focused 24/7 on Boeing’s recovery: “developing and executing our safety and quality plan [and] stabilizing our factories.”
“This is transformational change,” she said. “We’ve slowed down our factories pretty significantly to execute that change.”
“And I’m very clear with my team, this isn’t about safety and quality versus schedule,” she added. “We have to do safety, we have to do quality, we have to meet our commitments with a predictable schedule. … These are not competing priorities.”
And despite all the bad news this year and worries about Boeing’s trajectory, she insisted its airplanes are performing well and that with orders sold out through this decade, “we are a stable company.”
Pope declined to answer if she’s interested in the top job, replacing Dave Calhoun who is retiring as CEO of Boeing later this year.
And she wouldn’t be drawn on what have been two much-discussed options in the aviation world: sending a message of real culture shift to the workforce by moving the headquarters back to Seattle and by affirming publicly that the next new airplane will be built by that workforce.
It’s something industry experts and important Boeing customers are contemplating.
Related
With aviation’s future clouded, Airbus looks forward. Boeing holds on
In an interview days before the Air Show starts, John Plueger, CEO of Air Lease Corporation, a major jet leasing company and an influential customer to Boeing and Airbus, said moving the Boeing headquarters back to Seattle would be “a welcome move” not only to Puget Sound employees but to the entire aviation world as a gesture indicating Boeing is serious about returning to its roots and its former glory.
“I can hardly think of anyone in the industry, the airline industry, or the lessor community, those of us that buy new commercial aircraft, that would not applaud that,” Plueger said.
Plueger added that for Boeing to regain its position in the industry, the next CEO must “put the focus on the engineering side of the house, to be able to take a lead in a new single aisle aircraft.”
With the workhorse single-aisle jet market tilted about 40% to Boeing’s 737 MAX and 60% to the Airbus A320 jet family, Plueger said Boeing should move first to launch a new jet in that segment.
Boeing “does have an opportunity to put something out there that would help restore a 50/50 balance in the marketplace,” Plueger added.
Also interviewed just before the Air Show, Adam Pilarski, veteran aviation analyst with consulting firm Avitas, said moving the headquarters back to Seattle from Arlington, Va., would mean a only a few hundred employees relocating, but would be important symbolically.
“It shows that, yes, we want to retain our tradition. This is where we come from,” Pilarski said.
But in London, Pope demurred, focused her response on what is already in Seattle and declined to address future changes.
“The headquarters of our Boeing Commercial Airplanes [division] is in Seattle, and it’s always been in Seattle, as well as many of our enterprise leaders, including the head of engineering for the company, who resides in Seattle,” she said. “The Pacific Northwest has a deep heritage around aviation excellence and innovation, and that will continue.”
The press briefing served to underline how Boeing’s public messaging is paralyzed while it awaits the transition to a new CEO, the timing of which is unknown beyond that it should be this year.
Related
Boeing leadership transition
Interviewed in London on Saturday, U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, ranking member of the House Transportation Committee’s aviation subcommittee, said the extended transition period to replace Calhoun is “excruciating for the region.”
“I don’t like the region to be in that position where we’re kind of waiting for Godot,” he said.
In the Samuel Beckett play, Godot never comes, Larsen said, whereas a new Boeing CEO will have to be appointed sometime this year. But in the meantime, he said “the uncertainty is unnerving for the employees. It’s unnerving for the community of Everett.”
And Larsen — who said he came for a quick official visit ahead of the Air Show to assess “how the industry is changing globally and what that means for U.S. aviation” — made clear the issue of who will build that next all-new plane is a huge looming question both for Boeing employees and for the Pacific Northwest economy.
Boeing’s assembly line workers “are the ones who are feeling the big brunt of the pain the company is going through. … They have been carrying the burden of decisions that go back 20 years,” Larsen said. “Boeing needs to show a commitment that these workers are valued.”
“I want it in the Northwest,” he said.
In London, Boeing isn’t providing any clarity on that future question. For now, its single-minded focus is stabilizing production and reorganizing training and production to avoid any more quality lapses.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com; Dominic Gates is a Pulitzer Prize-winning aerospace journalist for The Seattle Times.
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| From: Eric | 7/23/2024 8:03:27 AM | | | | | | Boeing & Aerospace
When Boeing balked at new jet, Airbus moved. Now the A321 will ‘make an awful lot of money’
July 22, 2024 at 4:17 pm
1 of 3 | An Airbus A321 XLR aircraft during a flying display on the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, England, on Monday. The aviation summit is typically a platform for planemakers to rack up... (Jason Alden / Bloomberg)
By
Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
FARNBOROUGH, England — It might have been an all-new Boeing jet, a 757 replacement, flying over the Farnborough Air Show on Monday.
Instead it was a new Airbus plane, an extra-long-range derivative of the hot-selling A321neo, the A321XLR.
That Boeing never replaced the 757 was “a huge mistake,” said Bjorn Fehrm, an aviation analyst with Leeham.net. It would have been a “smack-on better competitor to the XLR.”
But with Boeing’s pullback, the XLR stands alone.
Boeing’s similarly sized 737 MAX 10, which is not expected to enter service until 2026, cannot fly so far. Airbus’ A320 jet family now offers airlines a choice of seat capacity and range right up to the scale of a 757, which Boeing stopped building two decades ago.
“We’re giving airlines a machine for any scenario,” said Gary O’Donnell, head of the XLR program, in an interview.
After delivering more than 3,400 of its A320/A321neo jet family, Airbus still has unfilled orders for more than 7,000, of which 5,000 are variants of the A321neo alone.
How the Airbus A321neo has run away with the large single-aisle jet market
The single-aisle jet market is reflected in the current order backlogs of Airbus and Boeing. Airbus has an advantage at the smaller end of this sector with its new A220 jet. In the middle, Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 is doing very well against the A320neo. But in the larger single-aisle jet segment, sales of the A321neo easily eclipse those of Boeing’s MAX 9 and MAX 10 models.
Airbus and Boeing figures as of the end of June (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)
This latest XLR model, which won European Union Aviation Safety Agency approval to fly passengers only on Friday, already has more than 500 orders. It’s due to enter service with Iberia this fall, flying between Madrid and Boston.
Longtime aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory said that, until the next generation of aircraft comes along in the late 2030s, “Airbus gets to make an awful lot of money.”
Attendees photograph an aerial display from a balcony beneath an Airbus logo during the opening day of the Farnborough International Airshow in Farnborough, England, on Monday. (Hollie Adams / Bloomberg)
Fundamentally similar, but changed everywhere
O’Donnell explained that Airbus’ seemingly simple decision to add an extra built-in fuel tank to provide the additional range required extensive engineering, “fundamentally changing pretty much all of the aircraft in order to stretch it for that extra distance.”
He said 80% of the structure is upgraded for strength to support the extra weight of the aircraft.
“The parts are fundamentally the same. They’re just slightly thicker to take the extra loads,” O’Donnell said.
That means the XLR can go down the same assembly line as the other A321neo models.
How far the A321neo variants can fly compared with the old Boeing 757 and the new 737 MAX 10
U.S. transcontinental routes require a range of about 3,500 miles. A Boeing 757 can just fly a transatlantic route, say from JFK to Shannon on the west coast of Ireland. The Airbus A321LR matches the 757’s range. The Airbus A321XLR will allow airlines to fly transatlantic, reaching into the interiors of the U.S. and Europe. This single-aisle jet, much cheaper for an airline to fly than the large twin-aisle aircraft typically flying transatlantic, could open new, less dense routes, say from Brussels to Philadelphia, or Rome to Cincinnati.
Source: Independent analysis by Bjorn Fehrm of Leeham.net gives each jet’s range assuming it is configured to seat 200 passengers. (Mark Nowlin / The Seattle Times)
Yet the wheels, tires and brakes are new; the main landing gear is a new design; the nose landing gear is reinforced; the movable flaps on the wings are reinforced.
And because the big extra fuel tank built into the lower rear fuselage blocked a clear path for cables from the cockpit, Airbus converted the rudder on the vertical tail fin to a fly-by-wire part that moves through an electronic signal, not a physical cable connection. The rudder had been the only movable surface in this jet family that was not fly-by-wire.
The changes became much more extensive when EASA demanded more fire protection measures around the extra fuel tank.
Structure was added to the jet’s belly to absorb crash loads and pads to protect the belly if it slid along the ground. The base of the tank was coated with a rubber lining that would hold off fuel spill in the case of a puncture.
The fuselage skin around the tank was changed to a stronger aluminum-composite laminate. An air gap between the belly fairing and the tank slows heat transfer from an external fire.
At the start of last year, Airbus took two flight test planes out of the sky and added all these newly designed fire safety elements for certification.
EASA was satisfied and Airbus worked in tandem with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to clear the design.
“The FAA are on board all the way,” O’Donnell said. “So we would expect the FAA to follow with a reasonably short time after the EASA certification.”
A 757 replacement
The genesis of all that work was an effort by Airbus to counter the threat of Boeing developing an all-new jet in this market segment.
After delivering just over 1,000 of its 757 narrowbody jets, in 2004 Boeing abandoned production of its largest and longest-range single-aisle aircraft. You’ll still find them flying, carrying Seattleites on seven-hour flights to Iceland and on to Europe.
By 2018, Boeing was publicly discussing designing a 757 replacement, a newer, more efficient jet that would be a bit bigger and even longer range — sized to fill a niche between current narrowbody 737 MAXs and the small widebody 787.
In an effort to stave off the threat of what Boeing was calling the New Midmarket Airplane, or sometimes the Middle-of-the-Market airplane, and reduce its market, Airbus at the Paris Air Show in 2019 launched the A321XLR.
Farnborough 2024: Essential stories from the big air show Airbus, Boeing execs diverge in style, mood as aviation’s biggest event kicks off
With aviation’s future clouded, Airbus looks forward. Boeing holds on
Korean Air orders up to 50 Boeing 777X, 787 jets at Farnborough air show
But by then, Boeing was newly engulfed in crisis after two deadly crashes grounded its remaining narrowbody, the 737 MAX. Boeing balked and never launched the New Midmarket Airplane.
Airbus was left with no competition to its A321neo that now looks stronger than ever with the XLR added to the lineup.
At a preshow interview with trade magazine Aviation Week, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said the company will delay launching a replacement for the A320/A321 jet family so that it won’t be ready for airlines to fly until near the end of the next decade. He said that will provide “time to make money” from the immense A320/A321 backlog of orders.
Airbus survives a stumble
The amazing success of the A320/A321neo jet family has survived one enormous setback on a par with some of Boeing’s stumbles.
Last year, engine maker Pratt & Whitney discovered that contaminated powdered metal was used in production of some critical parts inside its geared turbofan engines, causing cracking inside one of the engines airlines can choose when buying an A320neo.
This has turned into a multibillion-dollar disaster for Pratt & Whitney’s parent RTX, formerly Raytheon. More than 3,000 engines have be removed from airplanes already delivered for inspections and rework that take almost a year.
RTX projects an average of 350 airplanes to be on the ground through 2026, with much higher numbers this year. In April, more than 530 A320neos, a third of the delivered airplanes, were grounded.
This is of course also a disaster for those airlines, though RTX is paying compensation.
But Airbus seems to have escaped relatively unscathed. RTX since early this year is delivering clean engines to Airbus, so it doesn’t affect newly built aircraft. So orders have kept rolling.
The damage has been more to Pratt & Whitney’s reputation than to Airbus’.
Because the A320neo offers an engine choice, the other engine maker CFM International is reaping more orders for its LEAP engine, which is also the sole engine that powers Boeing’s MAX jets.
Boeing suffered immense financial damage when its under-construction 787s had to be reworked because of fuselage gaps so small the ones in service were never grounded.
In contrast, Airbus’ luck held and it shook off this major quality lapse that harmed its customers. Sales of the A321 continued to soar.
Is the XLR a game changer?
John Plueger, CEO of influential Los Angeles-based airplane lessor Air Lease Corp. sees the XLR as offering airlines new capabilities that may “take a bite out of the widebody jet market” that serves international air travel.
This narrowbody plane, the type a low-cost carrier might buy, can fly not just transatlantic but with “greater penetration into both continents, both in Europe and the United States” Plueger said.
He said lessors like to buy planes that they can lease to multiple customers and the customer base of the A321neo is unmatched.
“It makes the MAX 10 more of a niche aircraft,” Plueger said.
Andy Cronin, CEO of another lessor, Dublin-based Avolon, has ordered 100 A321neos, some of which he will take in the XLR version.
Cronin said “the bulk of the market will continue to be the midrange stuff, rather than people going for the ultralong range.”
Still, he said, the XLR fits well, extending the network possibilities.
Fehrm of Leeham.net is more effusive about the XLR’s prospects.
“It will change the face of long-range flying,” he said. “Low-cost carriers, which typically fly single-aisle jets only, can now buy an XLR, same pilot rating, same engines, same maintenance, same everything” as an A321neo.
“Suddenly, they can fly real long range,” said Fehrm.
American has ordered 54 XLRs and United 50. Both have announced plans for fancy, lie-flat business class seats for long-haul flying of up to nine hours in an XLR.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com; Dominic Gates is a Pulitzer Prize-winning aerospace journalist for The Seattle Times.
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| From: Eric | 7/24/2024 3:39:22 PM | | | | | | Boeing & Aerospace
Business
What do Boeing and Airbus share? Parts shortages and a supplier crisis
July 23, 2024 at 6:34 pm
Inside Sekisui Aerospace’s facility in Renton, a worker meticulously fills depressions and sands off rough spots on a thermoset airplane component to prepare the surface for painting. This is the kind of... (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times, 2023)
By
Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
FARNBOROUGH, England — At the Farnborough Air Show this week, the aerospace industry is focused on a worldwide supply chain crisis, illustrated by the predicament of Renton-based Boeing supplier Sekisui Aerospace.
As work picked up last year after the pandemic downturn and a protracted stoppage when Boeing 787 deliveries were halted, Sekisui added 220 employees.
To do so, Sekisui CEO Daniele Cagnatel said he had to recruit, hire and train 407 people. Almost half left within two or three weeks of joining the company.
Due to the COVID- and 787-induced slowdown, Sekisui “lost years and years and years of experience,” Cagnatel said in an interview shortly before the Farnborough Air Show. “People who left the business left aerospace, and those people are gone.”
“It’s a very painful, steep curve to get people and get them to stay,” Cagnatel said. “Industries which are less taxing in terms of work are paying the same as aerospace manufacturers.”
His problems have been compounded by the unreliability of Boeing’s production rates, first with the 787 stoppage and now with the slowdown as Boeing works to fix its quality problems.
“You find yourself staffed up, with all the costs of hiring and training,” Cagnatel said. “Then you don’t have the volume, because the schedule moves to the right.”
It’s not just Boeing’s problem.
Late last month, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury announced a 4% cut to projected jet deliveries this year, citing shortages of business-class seats, airplane structural parts and engines.
“We will have gliders in significant numbers by the end of the quarter,” Faury said, meaning completed jets parked outside with no engines available.
“We are spending more time, energy and human resources on supply chain management post-COVID than we ever did previously, and not by a small amount,” he added.
Farnborough 2024: Essential stories from the big air show
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Boss of biggest 777X customer wants Boeing fixed — with union help
Airbus, Boeing execs diverge in style, mood as aviation’s biggest event kicks off
With aviation’s future clouded, Airbus looks forward. Boeing holds on
Korean Air orders up to 50 Boeing 777X, 787 jets at Farnborough air show
The acute labor shortage has even hit Airbus itself.
At a panel discussion at the air show Tuesday, Delphine Bazaud, Airbus senior vice president and head of the industrial supply chain, said the European jet-maker has hired former butchers and bakers to work in its factories.
“It means we need to dedicate even more time for training and upskilling on the production line,” she said.
On the same panel, Ihssane Mounir, Boeing senior vice president for global supply chain and fabrication, offered an optimistic take on the moment the industry faces.
“We have an opportunity with the slowdown … to put the fundamentals in place,” he said.
Mounir pledged to support suppliers through their current difficulties.
To ensure reliable supply, he said Boeing can offer financial support where needed, send people to troubleshoot bottlenecks and help suppliers with planning and training. Boeing also is buying raw materials in bulk and selling them to suppliers at cost.
Mounir, who switched from being head of sales to fixing the supply chain 18 months ago, offered a kinder, gentler Boeing message to its suppliers after years of squeezing them on price.
“It really hinges on some very simple principles of building good relationships,” Mounir said. “And having the transparency and being present with the suppliers every step of the way.”
He said manufacturers must seize this moment of lower production to fix the supply chain for the future ramp-up.
“Demand is moving forward at a pretty good clip,” Mounir said. “We have to be ready for it.”
Carlos Amadeo, left, a lead thermoplastic technician at Sekisui Aerospace, and Maxwell Andrew, an innovation and development engineer, inspect an automated machine in Renton. The machine bonds pieces of carbon fiber composite to form a solid flat panel. Downline, other machines transform these panels into parts and interior structures for commercial aircraft and other industries. (Ellen M. Banner / The Seattle Times, 2023)
Hardest work a tough sell
On Tuesday, Mounir said the industry faces the worst supply problems “wherever you have the highest degree of touch labor, or the highest degree of craftsmanship and artisanship that goes into the work.”
That means skilled jobs like metal forging and casting to make such parts as engine turbine blades, said Kevin Michaels, an industry supply chain expert and founder of consulting firm Aerodynamic Advisory.
“This is tough, tedious work,” Michaels said. “People aren’t lining up to work in forging facilities.”
He said the shortage of business-class seats is a result of airlines designing sophisticated and bespoke seats stuffed with electronics that the regulators are slow to certify.
World events can have serious supply chain consequences too. The war in Ukraine has hit the supply of titanium, since most of the world’s supply comes from Russia.
Titanium is used extensively on widebody jets like the 787 and 777. The shortage of titanium would loom larger if not for the current low volume of widebody jet production, Michaels said.
He added that smaller “mom-and-pop shops” are diversifying away from commercial aerospace toward defense or space work after years of being forced to lower their prices.
“They are treated well by Blue Origin and SpaceX,” Michaels said.
The airplane manufacturers “have got to reset,” he said. “They need a rapprochement with their supply base.”
Mounir seems to recognize this.
“We can only meet our customer commitments and win new business if our supply base is healthy, stable and producing high-quality parts,” he said by email Tuesday. “We are committed to working side by side with our suppliers as genuine partners.”
Adam Pilarski, veteran industry analyst with consulting firm Avitas, said that both Boeing and Airbus will have to ease the pricing pressure on suppliers.
The jet-makers “have to realize that everybody has to make money,” he said.
Inevitably, he said, this means that the price of airplanes and of airplane tickets will also have to go up.
“The cost of lack of quality”
One fundamental problem clearly affecting industry hiring: While unionized Airbus and Boeing offer good pay and benefits, smaller suppliers in Washington state and elsewhere have traditionally paid much lower wages.
Post-pandemic, those wages have had to go up just to keep up with grocery stores and fast-food restaurants.
U.S. Aluminum Castings, based in Entiat, Chelan County, is one of the companies in the state’s delegation to the air show.
In an interview before the show, CEO Kristin Newberry said her company too cannot easily hire people to replace those who left in the past few years.
She said the work — cutting and grinding aluminum parts and pouring molten aluminum, working in a hot environment — is not appealing to the younger generation.
Newberry said she has raised wages to recruit people, with a wide range based on experience.
Still, the base salary at U.S. Aluminum starts at just $1 above the $16.28 minimum wage, she said.
On Tuesday’s panel, Mounir acknowledged that low wages at suppliers is a problem.
“It’s a reality,” he said. “The lower you go [in the supply chain], the more prominent the issue is in Washington.”
He said the industry must address this.
“I’ve learned very quickly that the cost of unpredictability and the cost of lack of quality and the cost of lack of reliability is much higher than any other cost,” he said.
As the industry struggles with the supply chain crisis, everyone on Tuesday’s panel agreed it will take time to recover.
Michaels of Aerodynamic Advisory certainly thinks so.
“It’s a five-year process to work our way out of this situation,” he said.
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| From: Eric | 7/31/2024 12:32:20 PM | | | | | | Boeing & Aerospace
Business
Nation
Boeing names new CEO as it posts loss of more than $1.4 billion in second quarter
July 31, 2024 at 4:55 am Updated July 31, 2024 at 8:17 am
1 of 8 | Kelly Ortberg, then-CEO of Rockwell Collins, is seen in 2016. Boeing has chosen Ortberg to succeed David Calhoun as CEO and president effective Aug. 8. (Daniel Acker / Bloomberg, file)
By
DAVID KOENIG
The Associated Press
Boeing named a longtime aerospace industry veteran Wednesday as its next chief executive, who will take over a company rocked by legal, regulatory and production problems and mounting financial repercussions.
Robert “Kelly” Ortberg, a former CEO at Boeing supplier Rockwell Collins, will succeed David Calhoun as CEO and president effective Aug. 8, the company said. Calhoun said in March that he would retire at the end of the year, and analysts generally praised the quicker transition.
Boeing announced its new CEO as it reported a loss of more than $1.4 billion on falling revenue during the second quarter. The loss was wider and the company’s revenue lower than Wall Street’s dismal expectations, as both Boeing’s commercial-airplanes business and defense unit lost money.
The disappointing results come at a tumultuous time for Boeing, which is the subject of multiple investigations into its safety culture and manufacturing quality.
More about Boeing and its new CEO
The American aerospace giant agreed to plead guilty this month to a federal fraud charge in connection with its 737 Max jetliner and two crashes that killed 346 people. The Federal Aviation Administration increased its oversight of the company and limited the number of planes it could produce after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines Max flying at an altitude of 16,000 feet. No one was seriously hurt, but the frightening incident and subsequent scrutiny have damaged Boeing’s reputation.
Boeing Chairman Steven Mollenkopf said Ortberg was chosen after a “thorough and extensive search process” and “has the right skills and experience to lead Boeing in its next chapter.” Ortberg has earned a reputation for running complex engineering and manufacturing companies, Mollenkopf said.
The company waived the mandatory retirement age of 65 for Ortberg, a spokesperson said. Boeing did the same for Calhoun days after he turned 64 in 2021.
Ortberg emerged as a leading candidate only recently. Others who were reportedly considered for the job included Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive and now CEO of its most important supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, and another longtime Boeing executive, Stephanie Pope, who recently took over the commercial airplanes division.
Ortberg led Rockwell Collins from 2013 to 2018, when it merged with United Technologies and wound up as part of RTX, the company formerly known as Raytheon. He retired from RTX in 2021.
Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aerospace analyst and consultant and recently a harsh critic of the company, said the hire is great news for Boeing.
“He is a deeply respected leader in the aerospace industry, and brings more hope for a better future than the company has enjoyed in decades,” Aboulafia said.
Deutsche Bank analyst Scott Deuschle said Ortberg “has an engineering background, experience in the aviation industry, and experience as a public company CEO.”
In a statement issued by Boeing, Ortberg said, “There is much work to be done, and I’m looking forward to getting started.”
Calhoun will serve as a special adviser to the Boeing board until next March.
Like Calhoun, who took over as CEO in the wake of the two Max crashes, Ortberg inherits the leadership of a company facing ongoing crises and criticism from inside and outside the company.
Boeing, based in Arlington, Virginia, is pushing back against whistleblower allegations of manufacturing shortcuts that crimp on safety. It is dealing with supply-chain problems that are hindering production, which it hopes to fix in part by re-acquiring Spirit AeroSystems, a key contractor. It faces a threatened strike this fall by its largest union, the International Association of Machinists.
The company is still trying to persuade regulators to approve two new models of the Max and a bigger version of its two-aisle 777 jetliner. And it faces a multi-billion-dollar decision on when to design a new single-aisle plane to replace the Max.
The quarterly earnings reported Wednesday reflected the continuing challenges at Boeing. The reported loss of $1.44 billion for the second quarter compared with a loss of $149 million a year earlier. Since the start of 2019, Boeing has lost more than $25 billion.
Excluding special items, the second-quarter loss worked out to $2.90 per share. Analysts expected a loss of $1.90 per share, according to a FactSet survey.
Revenue dropped 15%, to $16.87 billion, falling short of Wall Street’s average forecast of $17.35 billion. The commercial airplanes division had an operating loss of $715 million, and revenue plunged 32% as Boeing delivered fewer passenger jets to airlines — 92 planes, compared with 136 a year earlier.
The FAA limited Boeing’s production of Max jetliners shortly after the Alaska Airlines incident, but Boeing hasn’t even hit the FAA limits as it seeks to fix its manufacturing process. The company said Wednesday that it is sticking with its plans to boost production of the Max to 38 per month by year end.
Boeing took a charge of $244 million to cover a fine it agreed to pay as part of its plea deal with the Justice Department in connection with development of the Max. A federal judge in Texas will soon consider whether to approve the agreement, which also calls for the appointment of an independent compliance monitor and for Boeing to invest at least $455 million “in its compliance, quality, and safety programs.”
Many families of the people who died in the two Max crashes, which took place off the coast of Indonesia in 2018 and in Ethiopia less than five months later, oppose the deal and plan to ask the judge to reject it.
Boeing’s defense and space unit lost $913 million because of $1 billion in setbacks to four fixed-price government contracts, including a deal to build two new Air Force One presidential jets. The smaller services business earned $870 million.
Boeing shares rose 2% in morning trading.
DAVID KOENIG
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| From: Eric | 7/31/2024 1:00:08 PM | | | | | | Boeing & Aerospace
Business
Boeing chief coming home: New CEO will be based in Seattle
July 31, 2024 at 8:52 am
Kelly Ortberg, Boeing’s newly appointed chief executive officer, at a Rockwell Collins production facility in in Manchester, Iowa. (Daniel Acker / Bloomberg, 2016)
By
Dominic Gates
Seattle Times aerospace reporter
In a major gesture toward Boeing’s Puget Sound-area workforce, Kelly Ortberg, the new CEO of Boeing whose appointment was announced Wednesday morning, has chosen to be based in Seattle, according to a source familiar with the decision.
This step may indicate, though Virginia-based Boeing has made no announcement, that the company’s headquarters, after 23 years astray, will move back to where Boeing was born and where its heart as a commercial airplane manufacturer remains.
With Ortberg’s choice, along with Commercial Airplanes CEO Stephanie Pope, head engineer and Chief Technical Officer Todd Citron and other key executives already based here, the top leaders with control over the airplane building business will all be in Seattle.
“Ortberg is an industry guy. He knows the heritage of Boeing. He knows the heritage of Seattle. It would make sense moving there, that he move the headquarters back,” said Adam Pilarski, a veteran aviation analyst with consulting firm Avitas.
Early Wednesday, Boeing announced that Ortberg, former chief executive of Iowa-based major avionics supplier Rockwell Collins, would replace Dave Calhoun as Boeing CEO and president, effective Aug. 8.
“I’m extremely honored and humbled to join this iconic company,” said Ortberg in a statement. “Boeing has a tremendous and rich history as a leader and pioneer in our industry, and I’m committed to working together with the more than 170,000 dedicated employees of the company to continue that tradition, with safety and quality at the forefront.”
The Boeing factory in Renton is seen through open doors with Lake Washington in the background on July 17. (Ken Lambert / The Seattle Times)
777 freighters and a 777X are built at the Boeing Everett Production Facility on June 26 in Everett. (Jennifer Buchanan / The Seattle Times)
For Ortberg, 64, the Boeing board is waiving the mandatory retirement age of 65 to give him time to turn things around.
Ortberg, who has a degree in mechanical engineering, has worked as a leader in aerospace more than 35 years. He began his career in 1983 as an engineer at Texas Instruments, and then joined Rockwell Collins in 1987 as a program manager and held increasingly important leadership positions at the company prior to becoming its president and CEO in 2013.
After five years leading Rockwell Collins, he steered the company’s integration with United Technologies and RTX until his retirement from RTX in 2021.
He is the former chair of the Aerospace Industries Association Board of Governors.
The news of Ortberg’s appointment was widely greeted with enthusiasm within the aviation world.
Related
Boeing names new CEO as it posts $1.4B loss for quarter
Kevin Michaels, founder of aerospace consulting firm Aerodynamic Advisory and formerly in the late 1990s a director of strategic development at Rockwell Collins, observed Ortberg’s style back then.
On Wednesday, Michaels wrote on LinkedIn that Ortberg “did an amazing job.”
Michaels, an expert on the major aerospace suppliers, said Rockwell Collins was known for taking care of employees, customers, suppliers, the local community as well as shareholders.
“Collins was highly profitable, yet innovative and consistently rated as the best supplier,” he wrote. “Employees love the place. This is quite a contrast to other aerospace manufacturers and today’s Boeing.”
“All in all, a bright day for our beloved industry. Go Kelly! Go Boeing!” Michaels concluded.
U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, the lead Democrat on the Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, in a statement said he’s “encouraged” by Ortberg’s appointment, though he added that the new CEO “has his work cut out for him.”
“First, he has to ensure a continued commitment to the safety and quality plan,” Larsen said in a statement. “Second, he needs to listen to the women and men of the Machinists Union in the current labor negotiations.”
In an interview Jon Holden, president of District 751 of the International Association of Machinists, welcomed Ortberg’s move to the Puget Sound.
“I think that’s a positive thing. I think that’ll put him closest to the economic driver of this company, and I hope that leads to success,” Holden said.
On a company earnings call Wednesday morning, CEO Calhoun said he does not expect Kelly’s appointment will lead immediately to other changes at the executive level.
“My guess is he’s going to put his arms around” those already in place, including Stephanie Pope, who was also in the running for the top job.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Seattle Times reporter Lauren Rosenblatt contributed to this report.
Dominic Gates: 206-464-2963 or dgates@seattletimes.com; Dominic Gates is a Pulitzer Prize-winning aerospace journalist for The Seattle Times.
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