Boeing
Page: 13
FILE PHOTO: Men look at stock quotation boards outside a brokerage in Tokyo, Japan, December 5, 2018. REUTERS/Issei Kato
April 2, 2019
By Daniel Leussink
TOKYO (Reuters) – Asia shares extended their rally on Tuesday as factory activity surveys from China and the United States boosted investor confidence, triggering the largest one-day sell-off in the U.S. Treasury market in nearly three months.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.3 percent to a seven-month high after rallying more than one percent in the previous session.
Australian shares gained 0.8 percent while Japan’s Nikkei advanced 0.4 percent, extending its gains for a third session.
Wall Street shares jumped on Monday, with the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average both rising more than one percent, with the Dow lifted by sharp gains in Caterpillar Inc and Boeing Co.
Investors cheered U.S. data overnight showing improvements in manufacturing activity last month and construction spending for February, which overshadowed an unexpected drop in retail sales.
The upbeat readings added to earlier data showing China’s manufacturing sector surprisingly returned to growth for the first time in four months in March in a sign government stimulus steps were starting to be felt.
The rare bright news for the global economy comes in the wake of persistent worries over cooling demand across the world, with the Sino-U.S. tariff dispute, slowing trade and corporate profits prompting investors to dump risk assets over the past several months.
“The market is reacting to the improvement of the sentiment in China. Many investors are buying in anticipation of a rise in shares,” said Norihiro Fujito, chief investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.
“But thinking about how things really are, at the end of the week (U.S.) jobless claims will be released and it’s true that individual consumption, which accounts for 70 percent of gross domestic product, hasn’t been good. I think that has to be taken into account,” Fujito said.
The encouraging data on manufacturing activity in the world’s two biggest economies led to a wobbly start to the U.S. bond market, with the U.S. benchmark 10-year Treasury note yields booking their largest single-day jump since Jan. 4.
The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield overnight jumped to a more than one-week high of 2.502 percent, moving off a 15-month low of 2.340 percent touched on March 25.
The rise pushed the yield curve between three-month U.S. Treasury bills and 10-year notes further into positive territory, after being inverted for a week until last Friday.
BREXIT CHAOS
In the currency market, sterling took a knock after British lawmakers came no nearer to resolving the chaos surrounding the country’s departure from the European Union.
The British parliament failed on Monday to find a majority of its own for any alternative to Prime Minister Theresa May’s divorce deal.
“The only sensible thing for Theresa May to do is to step aside and let someone else take control of Brexit,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets in London.
“Failure to chose any of the options on Brexit took the floor under sterling and the currency stumbled like a rock,” Aslam said in a note to clients.
Sterling was last down 0.25 percent at $1.3073, not far from last month’s nadir of $1.2945.
The euro struggled near a three-week low of $1.1198 brushed early on Tuesday, and was last trading down a tenth of a percent at $1.1204.
Against the Japanese yen, the dollar was down a tad at 111.33 yen, but 1.5 percent above its 1-1/2-month low of 109.70 touched on March 25.
Oil prices hovered near their four-month peaks, after two key benchmarks booked their largest first-quarter gains in nearly a decade on positive signs for the global economy and tighter supplies. [O/R]
U.S. crude futures traded at $61.92 per barrel, up half a percent on the day. Brent futures were up 0.4 percent at $69.28 a barrel.
Gold was 0.15 percent higher at $1,289.10.
(Editing by Shri Navaratnam)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A Boeing 737 MAX 8 takes off during a flight test in Renton, Washington, January 29, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Redmond/File Photo
April 1, 2019
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Monday it expects to receive Boeing Co’s proposed software enhancement package for the grounded 737 MAX “over the coming weeks” after the company had previously said it planned to submit the fix for government approval by last week.
FAA spokesman Greg Martin said that “time is needed for additional work by Boeing as the result of an ongoing review of the 737 MAX Flight Control System to ensure that Boeing has identified and appropriately addressed all pertinent issues.”
Boeing did not immediately comment.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, editing by G Crosse)
Source: OANN
An AutonomouStuff Automated Research Development Vehicle drives on the race track during a self-racing cars event at Thunderhill Raceway in Willows, California, U.S., April 1, 2017. REUTERS/Stephen Lam
April 1, 2019
By Paul Lienert and Maria Caspani
(Reuters) – Half of U.S. adults think automated vehicles are more dangerous than traditional vehicles operated by people, while nearly two-thirds said they would not buy a fully autonomous vehicle, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.
In the same poll, about 63 percent of those who responded said they would not pay more to have a self-driving feature on their vehicle, and 41 percent of the rest said they would not pay more than $2,000.
The poll results outline the challenges that face car and truck makers, delivery companies, technology companies and ride services operators such as Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc. All are plowing capital into developing self-driving vehicles and related hardware. Developers of the technology are making progress, but polls indicate the industry’s efforts to build public trust and commercial demand lag behind.
The findings are similar to those in a 2018 Reuters/Ipsos poll. They are consistent with results in surveys by Pew Research Center, the American Automobile Association and others. In March 2018, after the 2018 Reuters/Ipsos poll, an Uber vehicle operating in self-driving mode struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona.
Relatively few U.S. residents have seen or ridden in a self-driving vehicle, and experts said suspicion of unknown technology can give way to acceptance once it becomes more familiar.
“People are comfortable with things they know,” said investor Chris Thomas, co-founder of Fontinalis Partners and Detroit Mobility Lab. “When everybody understands the game-changing attributes of automated vehicles, how they can give you back all that time to read or work or sleep, they will start to ask about the value of that recaptured time.”
For companies investing in autonomous vehicles, public mistrust and the unwillingness to pay for self-driving systems are an increasingly urgent problem.
But widespread deployment of fully self-driving vehicles is some years away, industry officials and experts said. Alphabet Inc’s Waymo unit has deployed a small fleet of self-driving vans to provide rides for customers in Arizona, and other companies have self-driving vehicles on public streets in test fleets.
“At the moment, those responses are largely based on zero knowledge and zero experience, so it’s mostly a visceral reaction to something they read about, like the (2018) Uber crash in Arizona,” said Dan Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, and the author of several books on future transportation.
Autonomous vehicle companies have been trying for more than two years to get the U.S. Congress to enact legislation that would give a regulatory green light to self-driving cars. So far, opposition has bottled up the industry friendly bills. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration meanwhile has yet to act on proposals to exempt autonomous vehicles from conventional vehicle safety standards.
Two-thirds of survey respondents said self-driving cars should be held to higher government safety standards than traditional vehicles driven by humans.
“Somebody needs to be held accountable,” said survey respondent Carla Ross, 62, a teacher from Norfolk, Virginia. “Those cars shouldn’t even go on the road until they can guarantee a certain percentage of safety.”
The poll’s findings that most consumers would not pay for self-driving vehicle capability underscores concerns within the vehicle industry about the high costs of the technology, such as lidar sensors and high-powered onboard computers. Lidar is similar to radar but uses laser light instead of radio waves.
“I’m concerned that even when we get the technology absolutely right, we will not have the business,” said investor and corporate adviser Evangelos Simoudis, managing director of Synapse Partners, which invests in autonomous vehicle technology startups.
Self-driving expert Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, said a number of companies “don’t actually want to sell people these cars — they want to rent us these services. They want us to pay every month, every trip.”
For many Americans, “$2,000 is a lot of money,” he said. “If you’d asked people if they’d pay $15,000 for an advanced safety package or even $10,000 for a luxury trim package, the answer in a lot of cases is going to be no.”
The challenges of turning over critical safety systems to robots are now a central issue in debate over how regulators should respond to a pair of deadly crashes involving Boeing 737 MAX airliners. Investigators trying to determine the causes of crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia are focusing on evidence that an automated flight control system on the jets put the planes into nose dives, and pilots were unable to override the systems.
“If there’s one (airplane) crash a year, it creates huge backlash — and airplanes are far, far safer than cars,” said Sperling.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll surveyed 2,222 people online in English across the United States and it has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 2 percent.
(Reporting by Paul Lienert in Detroit and Maria Caspani in New York)
Source: OANN
The angle of attack sensor, at bottom center, is seen on a 737 Max aircraft at the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, U.S., March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
April 1, 2019
RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s transport minister said on Monday there were no immediate plans to allow Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to operate in the kingdom.
Boeing’s top-selling MAX jet was grounded around the world last month after two fatal crashes involving the model in five months.
“There were no 737 max flying in the kingdom at the time and there aren’t plans for them to be back in the near future,” Minister Nabeel al-Amudi told reporters at an aviation conference in Riyadh.
(Reporting by Stephen Kalin, writing by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Alison Williams)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A number of grounded Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft are shown parked at Victorville Airport in Victorville, California, U.S., March 26, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Blake
March 30, 2019
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Southwest Airlines Co said on Friday it was pulling its Boeing Co 737 MAX jets from flight schedules through May, extending its earlier timeline from April 20, according to a company memorandum seen by Reuters.
“This will impact the lines in May, but, now that the decision has been made, we can construct our schedule without those flights well in advance in hopes to minimize the daily disruptions,” the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association and the company said in the joint memorandum.
Boeing’s top-selling 737 MAX jetliner has been grounded in the wake of two deadly crashes involving that model in five months, one in Indonesia last October and another on March 10 in Ethiopia.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; editing by Grant McCool)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Ethiopian Federal policemen stand at the scene of the Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 plane crash, near the town of Bishoftu, southeast of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia March 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tiksa Negeri/File Photo
March 29, 2019
By David Shepardson and Tim Hepher
WASHINGTON/PARIS (Reuters) – An anti-stall system at the center of a probe into the crash of a Boeing 737 MAX jetliner in Indonesia five months ago was also at play when an identical aircraft crashed in Ethiopia earlier this month, three people briefed on the matter said.
Data pulled from the Ethiopian Airlines flight recorder suggests the so-called MCAS system, which pushes the nose of the jet downwards, had been activated before the jet ploughed into a field outside Addis Ababa on March 10, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of an interim official report.
Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration declined to comment on the data, first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
It is the second related piece of evidence to emerge from the black boxes of Ethiopian flight 302 after an initial sample of data recovered by investigators in Paris 11 days ago suggested similar “angle of attack” readings to the first crash.
These initial airflow readings from the Ethiopian jet, first reported by Reuters, refer to stall-related information needed to trigger the automated nose-down MCAS system.
The system is designed to be activated only when the angle of attack – measuring the way the wing cuts through the air – has become too high to avoid the plane stalling or losing lift.
However, it was not immediately clear whether the system on the Ethiopian jet was responding to faulty sensor data, as in the case of the earlier crash, or genuine stall indications.
Ethiopian, French and U.S. officials have said there are similarities between the two accidents, which led to the worldwide grounding of the recently introduced 737 MAX.
An Ethiopian-led investigation is trying to establish whether the system overpowered the pilots, a leading scenario in the Lion Air crash, and what action was taken by the crew.
Boeing has suggested using two existing cut-out switches could have prevented the Lion Air disaster, but it has also announced proposals to beef up the system and improve training.
Two of the people briefed on the matter said they presumed that the Ethiopian Airlines pilots did not hit the cut-out switches based on the airplane’s speed and fatal descent, but could not confirm that the data established that.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, Tim Hepher, Editing by Sarah White)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A logo of supersonic jet maker Aerion Corporation is pictured on their booth during the European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition (EBACE) in Geneva, Switzerland, May 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
March 29, 2019
By Allison Lampert
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Supersonic jet developer Aerion Corp is designing its first plane to run completely on biofuels to reduce emissions, even as the company calls for new global standards for planes that can conquer the sound barrier, the company’s chief executive said on Thursday.
Aerion’s business jet AS2, with a $120 million list price per jet, would be capable of running on synthetic paraffinic kerosene (SPK) biofuel, CEO Tom Vice said at a Wings Club event in New York.
Existing subsonic aircraft use a blend of biofuels and conventional jet kerosene to ensure the quality of the fuel does not harm the engine. Aerion’s plane would have an engine designed with seals that could handle the biofuel, he said.
“We believe that running biofuels will reduce our CO2 emissions by at least 40 percent,” Vice said.
Aerion and fellow supersonic plane makers Spike Aerospace and Boom Supersonic are working to reintroduce ultra-fast passenger planes for the first time since the Anglo-French Concorde retired in 2003.
Aerion, which recently secured an undisclosed investment from U.S. planemaker Boeing Co, has said the AS2 would fly at speeds of up to Mach 1.4, or about 1,000 miles (1,610 km) per hour, 70 percent faster than conventional business jets.
Its first flight is slated for 2023.
Today’s supersonic jets, while quieter and more fuel efficient than the Concorde, have difficulty meeting noise levels and carbon emissions standards for conventional planes due to engine constraints and higher fuel burn.
The United States has been pushing for the creation of new global rules on noise for supersonic jets, but faces opposition from Europe which wants these aircraft to meet the same standards as existing planes.
The United Nations’ aviation agency, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which sets global standards that are usually adopted by its 192 member countries, has said it would study supersonic jets. It has not committed to creating new standards for the planes.
“We definitely want to see differences between subsonic and supersonic standards,” Vice said. “There are differences between the airplanes.”
Aerion’s AS2 would meet noise levels for subsonic planes, but not the carbon standard for emissions.
“For CO2 they haven’t set the standard for supersonic. So all we have is the subsonic standard. AS2 has a higher fuel burn so we won’t meet that standard,” he said.
Creating an engine capable of running on biofuels would lower emissions, although there is a limited supply of such fuel available, he said.
(Reporting by Allison Lampert; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
Source: OANN
Two workers walk under the wing of a 737 Max aircraft at the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, U.S., March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
March 29, 2019
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Tour operator Tui AG on Friday warned it would take a 200 million euro ($225 million) profit hit in 2019 due to the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX aircrafts in the wake of two deadly crashes of the model.
The group said it now expects underlying earnings before interest, tax and amortization (EBITA) to fall by 17 percent, having previously expected it to be flat compared with 2018.
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz; editing by Thomas Seythal)
Source: OANN
The angle of attack sensor, at bottom center, is seen on a 737 Max aircraft at the Boeing factory in Renton, Washington, U.S., March 27, 2019. REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson
March 29, 2019
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia’s Sriwijaya Air, which is operated by flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, has canceled a plan to lease two Boeing Co 737 MAX jets, a spokesman said on Friday.
“Due to the Ethiopian crash, the company felt it had to cancel the plan,” Sriwijaya Air spokesman Adi Willi Hanhari Haloho told Reuters, referring to the Ethiopian Airlines crash of a Boeing 737 MAX 8 that killed 157 people earlier this month.
That accident came five months after a Lion Air 737 MAX 8 crashed off Indonesia, killing 189.
Haloho declined to name who the lessor for the Boeing jets was.
(Reporting by Fanny Potkin; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A Boeing 737 MAX 8 takes off during a flight test in Renton, Washington, January 29, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Redmond/File Photo
March 29, 2019
By Jamie Freed
SINGAPORE (Reuters) – U.S. and European regulators knew at least two years before a Lion Air crash that the usual method for controlling the Boeing 737 MAX’s nose angle might not work in conditions similar to those in two recent disasters, a document shows.
The European Aviation and Space Agency (EASA) certified the plane as safe in part because it said additional procedures and training would “clearly explain” to pilots the “unusual” situations in which they would need to manipulate a rarely used manual wheel to control, or “trim,” the plane’s angle.
Those situations, however, were not listed in the flight manual, according to a copy from American Airlines seen by Reuters.
The undated EASA certification document, available online, was issued in February 2016, an agency spokesman said.
It specifically noted that at speeds greater than 230 knots (265mph, 425kph) with flaps retracted, pilots might have to use the wheel in the cockpit’s center console rather than an electric thumb switch on the control yoke.
EASA and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ultimately determined that set-up was safe enough for the plane to be certified, with the European agency citing training plans and the relative rarity of conditions requiring the trim wheel.
In the deadly Lion Air crash in October, the pilots lost control after initially countering the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), a new automated anti-stall feature that was pushing the nose down based on data from a faulty sensor, according to a preliminary report from Indonesian investigators released in November.
The flight conditions were similar to those described in the EASA document, a source at Lion Air said. The source said that training materials before the crash did not say the wheel could be required under those conditions but that Boeing advised the airline about it after the crash.
Boeing declined to comment on the EASA document or its advice to Lion Air, citing the ongoing investigation into the crash.
Ethiopia’s Transport Ministry, France’s BEA air accident authority and the FAA have all pointed to similarities between the Lion Air crash and an Ethiopian Airlines disaster this month. But safety officials stress that the Ethiopian investigation is at an early stage.
‘NOT PHYSICALLY EASY’
The crashes have also heightened scrutiny of the certification and pilot training for the latest model of Boeing Co’s best-selling workhorse narrowbody, now grounded globally.
In the EASA document, the regulator said simulations showed the electric thumb switches could not keep the 737 MAX properly trimmed under certain conditions, including those of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, according to the Indonesian preliminary report and a source with knowledge of the Ethiopian air traffic control recordings.
The trim system adjusts the angle of the nose. If the nose is too far up, the jet risks entering a stall.
Additional procedures and training needed to “clearly explain” when the manual wheel might be needed, according to the document. The EASA spokesman said that was a reference to the Boeing flight crew operations manual.
An American Airlines Group Inc flight manual for 737 MAX pilots dated October 2017 said the thumb switches had less ability to move the nose than the manual wheel.
The manual, which is 1,400 pages long, did not specify the flight conditions in which the wheel might be needed.
The trim wheel is a relic of the Boeing 737’s 1960s origins and does not appear in more modern planes like the 787 and Airbus SE A350. It is not often used, several current and former 737 pilots told Reuters.
“It would be very unusual to use the trim wheel in flight. I have only used manual trim once in the simulator,” said a 737 pilot. “It is not physically easy to make large trim changes to correct, say, an MCAS input. You – or more than likely the other pilot – have to flip out a little handle and wind, much like a boat winch.”
The EASA document said that after flight testing, the FAA’s Transport Airplane Directorate, which oversees design approvals and modifications, was concerned about whether the 737 MAX system complied with regulations because the thumb switches could not control trim on their own in all conditions.
FAA declined to comment on the European document. A trim-related “equivalent level of safety” (ELOS) memorandum listed in its 737 MAX certification document is not available on the FAA website. The agency declined to provide it to Reuters.
CONFUSING SIGNALS
The night before the Lion Air crash, different pilots on the same plane faced a similar problem with MCAS and tried to use electric trim to counteract it, according to the preliminary report from Indonesian investigators.
After the third time MCAS forced the nose down, the first officer commented that the control column was “too heavy to hold back” to counter the automated movements, the preliminary report said.
Former FAA accident investigator Mike Daniel said that to prevent stalls, the control column was designed to require more force for a pilot to pull back than to push forward.
Boeing on Wednesday said software changes to MCAS would provide additional layers of protection, including making it impossible for the system to keep the flight crew from counteracting it.
On the 737 MAX, Boeing removed the “yoke jerk” function that enabled pilots to disable the automated trim system with a hard pull on the control column rather than hitting two cut-out switches on the center console.
In a blog post on his personal website, former Boeing engineer Peter Lemme said that could make things harder for a pilot in a crisis.
“In the scenario where the stabilizer is running away nose down, the pilot may only fixate on pulling the column back in response,” he said. “They may not be mentally capable to trim back or cutout the trim – instead they just keep pulling.”
Ultimately the crew the evening before the Lion Air crash stopped the automated nose-down movement with the cut-out switches and used the wheel to control trim for the remainder of the flight, the preliminary report said.
That was the proper procedure to deal with a runaway stabilizer, according to Boeing.
However, current and former pilots told Reuters that the way the trim wheel and other controls behaved in practice compared with in training may have confused the Lion Air crews, who were also dealing with warnings about unreliable airspeed and altitude.
“MCAS activation produces conditions similar to a runaway trim, but the training is not done with a stick shaker active and multiple other failures, which make the diagnosis much more difficult,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and former commercial pilot. The stick shaker alerts pilots to a potential stall by vibrating the control column.
Reuters this month reported that an off-duty pilot in the cockpit on the night before the Lion Air crash spotted the runaway stabilizer problem, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Boeing on Wednesday said changes to the MCAS software would help “reduce the crew’s workload in non-normal flight situations.”
(Reporting by Jamie Freed in Singapore; additional reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal, Cindy Silviana in Jakarta, David Shepardson in Washington, Marcelo Rochabrun in Sao Paolo, Eric M. Johnson in Seattle, Tim Hepher in Paris, Tracy Rucinski in Chicago and Maggie Fick in Nairobi; Editing by Gerry Doyle)
Source: OANN
MAGA One Radio