From Zero Hedge

By Tyler Durden

An internal FAA memo, viewed by WSJ, reveals another crisis that could be developing at Boeing, and no, it does not involve the 737 Max that remains grounded. New details are emerging, the company's 787 Dreamliner could have components within its fuselage that do not meet design standards.

The Aug. 31 FAA memo stated quality-control lapses at certain Boeing 787 Dreamliner production lines, located in South Carolina, could date back to at least a decade ago. The planemaker told aviation authorities that certain parts failed to meet its own "design and manufacturing standards." 

The parts in question are "nonconforming" sections of "rear fuselage, or body of the plane, that fell short of engineering standards," WSJ said, citing the memo. Sources told WSJ these revelations might spur accelerated inspections that could cover 900 of the 1,000 jets produced since 2011.

Boeing told aviation regulators that quality lapses of certain fuselage parts do not pose an immediate threat to the air safety of the wide-body jet airliner that is mainly used for international flights. 

These new developments come as Boeing pulled eight 787 Dreamliners in August for repairs, discovering they did not meet structural-soundness "requirements for safe flight and landing," according to the FAA memo. 

Compound these developing 787 Dreamliner issues with the two fatal accidents of its narrow-body 737 MAX, and Boeing is experiencing widespread manufacturing quality-control lapses. 

Boeing has notified all airlines with 787 Dreamliners about the problems, the spokesman told WSJ. The memo said Boeing had requested more time to resolve some of these issues. 

According to one person briefed on the FAA's discussions with Boeing, there is a new focus on why manufacturing breakdowns occurred and how computerized safeguards failed to alert production crew on parts that failed to meet design standards. 

WSJ said as Boeing engineers investigate flight records to identify 787 Dreamliners with possible issues, the FAA already has knowledge of one of the defects: "the planemaker didn't test how it produces shims, or material that fills gaps between barrel-shaped sections of the jets' fuselages, to ensure they meet requirements." The shims are manufactured at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. 

On top of 787 Dreamliner and 737 Max design woes, Boeing has seen six straight months (as of August) of airlines canceling narrow and wide body plane orders as the virus-induced downturn in air travel has doomed the industry for the next several years. 

The release of the WSJ story describing Boeing's latest woes comes as the US is on holiday with financial markets closed.

From Zero Hedge

By Tyler Durden

American Airlines Slated To Drop Dozens Of Flights To Smaller Cities As Government Aid Dries Up

With the government set to stop subsidizing the industry, airlines are <gasp> actually going to have to make operational changes to effectively deal with the lack of demand. Oh, the horror of free market forces actually forcing companies to make business changes!

This starts with American Airlines, who is reportedly preparing to drop two dozen small and medium city flights as federal coronavirus aid is set to end. The aid had previously mandated that airlines were not allowed to cut service approaches. 

Carriers were previously required to maintain minimum levels of service through September 30 as part of a $25 billion aid package, according to CNBC. They were also prohibited from making layoffs. Under the aid package, American Airlines received $5.8 billion.

The purpose of the deal was to provide both payroll assistance and continued air service around the country despite the fact that planes didn't have any passengers. 

American's forthcoming cancellations could start showing up in fall schedules that are set to begin next week, the report said. Changes still have not been finalized and the list of cities that could be cut has not been released. Both airlines and their respective unions have continued to push Congress for another $25 billion in support to keep paying workers through the end of next March, when hopefully demand can recover.

Both the Democrats and Republicans seemed to be in favor of such a deal weeks ago, but negotiations have stalled in Congress for the time being. As a result, the Department of Transportation had informed American Airlines that a planned extension of the benefits was not going to happen for the time being.

A DOT spokesperson commented: “The Department did not propose to extend the obligations, but will use the authority in the CARES Act to monitor ongoing access by the traveling public to the national air transportation system. The Department is also prepared to implement any new provisions of law in this area if enacted by Congress.”

United and Delta have not announced changes to their schedule yet. However, one source told CNBC, the "situation is fluid".

From Zero Hedge

Boeing Is Running Out Of Space To Park Its Newly-Built 787 Dreamliners Which Nobody Wants To Buy

While Morgan Stanley continues to stubbornly repeat that the US economy is undergoing a jolly V-shaped recovery, one would be very hard pressed to observe that in either the number of airline passengers, or the commercial aerospace sector in general, where Boeing has become a poster child for how quickly the fate can turn... and it's not just the company's ill-fated Boeing 737 MAX which may or may not fly again. According to Bloomberg, Boeing is now also running out of space to stash newly-built 787 Dreamliners, as unsold jetliners are now crammed onto "every available patch of pavement on airfields near its factories in Washington and South Carolina."

Citing people familiar with the situation, Bloomberg writes that "dozens of the planes are sitting on the company’s premises" with Uresh Sheth, a closely followed blogger who meticulously tracks the Dreamliners rolling through Boeing’s factories, putting the total somewhere above 50. That’s more than double the number of jets typically awaiting customers along Boeing’s flight lines.

According to Sheth, brand-new widebodies are lined up on a closed off runway at the airport that abuts Boeing’s hulking plant north of Seattle. In North Charleston, 787s are tucked around the delivery center and a paint hangar. The U.S. planemaker has even started sending aircraft to be stored in a desert lot in Victorville, California.

Boeing's troubles with parked jets are nothing new: last year Boeing had so many 737 Maxes after their global ground when it emerged that Boeing had drastically cut corners to save on costs even if it meant risking people's lives, that it commandeered an employee parking lot to store surplus aircraft. Now, as it finally starts to emerge from that crisis, another critical source of cash - the company's marquee jet, the 787 Dreamliner - is under pressure but not do to airworthiness concerns but simply due to the global depression that commercial air traffic has found itself in.

As Bloomberg notes, Boeing has relied on the wide-body jet, produced in record numbers, to help bankroll the $20 billion in costs it has rung up since the Max was banned from commercial flight in March 2019 following two fatal crashes. But as Covid-19 sapped consumer interest in long-range travel this year, "the tally of undelivered Dreamliners has stacked up and created a new financial drag as regulators move closer to clearing the 737’s return."

As a result of the current state of the airline industry, "the next couple of years are just going to be very hard for this airplane,” George Ferguson, a Bloomberg analyst said of the 787 Dreamliner. Some more details:

Demand for the twin-aisle 787, Boeing’s 777 and Airbus’s A350 and A330neo has been especially hard hit as cash-strapped airlines slow or cancel aircraft purchases. Some would-be buyers don’t want to send pilots to claim aircraft in the U.S., where the pandemic is raging. When they are able to start growing fleets, airlines are expected to initially focus on smaller planes for domestic flights before adding larger aircraft for continent-hopping trips.

Boeing also faces a “capacity hangover” after pushing Dreamliner production to a 14-jet monthly pace last year -- a record for wide-body aircraft -- in a market that was already glutted with aircraft, said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with Teal Group.

“It was one of the few levers they could pull to bring in more cash during what seemed like a crisis, and now looks like a nothingburger,” Aboulafia said of Boeing’s response to the Max grounding. That scandal has been eclipsed by the unprecedented aviation collapse brought on by Covid-19. “No twin-aisle had ever been built at 14-a-month for a very good reason.”

For now, Boeing is acting as if demand will soon rebound: "We continue to closely monitor the commercial marketplace by staying very engaged with our customers around the globe to fully understand short term and long term requirements," Greg Smith, the company’s chief financial officer and executive vice president of enterprise operations, said in a statement.

Unfortunately, such optimism remains wildly misplaced as customers took just three of Boeing’s 787 during May and June, and 36 of the aircraft in the first six months of the year, down more than 50% from 78 deliveries a year earlier.

While Boeing has already lowered 787 production to 10 jets a month, it will need to pursue far deeper cuts over the next two years, which will further sap the company's cash flow. Even so, the manufacturer could be left holding one-third of the more than 100 Dreamliners that J.P. Morgan analyst Seth Seifman projects the company will build this year.

In short, as a result of the global economic recession, Boeing is facing a good, old inventory glut, and absent taking a machete to prices, it will have big problems clearing out the excess inventory.

From FlightRadar24

By Gabriel Leigh

The NTSB has released its findings on Atlas Air 5Y3591, a 767 freighter flight that crashed on approach to Houston (IAH) in February last year. The release comes ahead of a final report which is expected within the next few weeks. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, observers were perplexed and alarmed at the sudden and steep descent the 767 appeared to have experienced as it was performing an otherwise relatively normal approach. The aircraft in question was Boeing 767-375(ER)(BCF) registered N1217A. ADS-B data from the flight can be found here.

The findings indicate the cause of the crash was disorientation on the part of the first officer. However, the NTSB also points to the captain’s failure to properly monitor the situation, as well as failings in industry standards for performance assessment that failed to catch “aptitude related deficiencies and maladaptive stress response” on the part of the first officer. As is often the case, it was a sequence of failings that led to the deaths of captain, first officer, and an additional pilot in the jumpseat.

However, at the heart of the sequence of events that led the 767 freighter to rapidly descend into the ground was what is known as a “pitch-up somatogravic illusion,” a phenomenon in which an increase in acceleration can create the illusion that the aircraft is pitching up. That happened as a result of the go-around mode being activated inadvertently. The first officer evidently believed the aircraft was stalling despite no stall warning activating in the flight deck.

The NTSB released the following animation of the flight:

The captain was also distracted because he was setting up the approach and speaking to ATC, according to the NTSB, which said “his attention was diverted from monitoring the airplane’s state and verifying that the flight was proceeding as planned. This delayed his recognition of, and his response to, the first officer’s unexpected actions that placed the plane in a dive. Investigators also concluded the captain’s failure to command a positive transfer of control of the airplane as soon as he attempted to intervene on the controls enabled the first officer to continue to force the airplane into a steepening dive.”

On top of that, investigators found that the first officer had performance deficiencies which he took deliberate steps to conceal, and might have led Atlas Air to take appropriate action had they known of them in the first place.

“The first officer in this accident deliberately concealed his history of performance deficiencies, which limited Atlas Air’s ability to fully evaluate his aptitude and competency as a pilot,” said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt. “Therefore, today we are recommending that the pilot records database include all background information necessary for a complete evaluation of a pilot’s competency and proficiency.”

As a result of the investigation, the NTSB has issued six new safety recommendations to the FAA, addressing “flight crew performance, industry pilot hiring process deficiencies, and adaptations of automatic ground collision avoidance system technology.”

From Airline Ratings

By Geoffrey Thomas

June 10, 2020

Airline Industry is expected to lose US$84 billion in 2020 according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA) which has just released its financial outlook for the global air transport industry.

The net profit margin will plummet to -20.1 percent with revenues crashing 50 percent to $419 billion from $838 billion in 2019.

In 2021, losses are expected to be cut to $15.8 billion as revenues rise to $598 billion.

“Financially, 2020 will go down as the worst year in the history of aviation. On average, every day of this year will add $230 million to industry losses. In total that’s a loss of $84.3 billion. It means that—based on an estimate of 2.2 billion passengers this year—airlines will lose $37.54 per passenger. That’s why government financial relief was and remains crucial as airlines burn through cash,” said Alexandre de Juniac, IATA’s Director General and CEO.

“Provided there is not a second and more damaging wave of COVID-19, the worst of the collapse in traffic is likely behind us. A key to the recovery is the universal implementation of the re-start measures agreed through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to keep passengers and crew safe. And, with the help of effective contact tracing, these measures should give governments the confidence to open borders without quarantine measures. That’s an important part of the economic recovery because about 10% of the world’s GDP is from tourism and much of that depends on air travel. Getting people safely flying again will be a powerful economic boost,” said de Juniac.

IATA says passenger demand has evaporated as international borders closed and countries locked down to prevent the spread of the virus. This is the biggest driver of industry losses. At the low point in April, global air travel was roughly 95 percent below 2019 levels.

Overall traffic levels (in Revenue Passenger Kilometer) for 2020 are expected to fall by 54.7 percent compared to 2019 with passenger numbers roughly halve to 2.25 billion, approximately equal to 2006 levels.

Capacity, however, cannot be adjusted quickly enough with a 40.4 percent decline expected for the year.

The problem for airlines is made worse as passenger revenues are expected to fall to $241 billion (down from $612 billion in 2019). This is greater than the fall in demand, reflecting an expected 18 percent fall in passenger yields as airlines try to encourage people to fly again through price stimulation. Load factors are expected to average 62.7 percent for 2020, some 20 percentage points below the record high of 82.5 percent achieved in 2019.

And costs are not falling as fast as demand. Forecast total expenses of $517 billion are 34.9 percent below 2019 levels but revenues will see a 50 percent drop. Non-fuel unit costs will rise sharply by 14.1%, as fixed costs are spread over fewer passengers. Lower utilization of aircraft and seats as a result of restrictions will also add to rising costs.

From The Seattle Times

By Dominic Gates

A Boeing engineer who last year lodged an internal ethics complaint alleging serious shortcomings in development of the 737 MAX has written to a U.S. Senate committee asserting that systemic problems with the jet’s design “must be fixed before the 737 MAX is allowed to return to service.”

The letter to the Senate, a copy of which was obtained by The Seattle Times, was written by engineer Curtis Ewbank, a 34-year-old specialist in flight-deck systems whose job when the MAX was in early stages of development involved studying past crashes and using that information to make new planes safer.

His letter, sent earlier this month, argues that it’s not enough for Boeing to fix the flawed Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) that’s known to have brought down the aircraft in two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

“I have no doubt the FAA and lawmakers are under considerable pressure to allow the 737 MAX to return to service as quickly as possible and as soon as the public MCAS flaw is fixed,” Ewbank told the Senate.  “However, given the numerous other known flaws in the airframe, it will be just a matter of time before another flight crew is overwhelmed by a design flaw known to Boeing and further lives are senselessly lost.”

He goes on to suggest similar shortcomings in the flight-control systems may affect the safety of Boeing’s forthcoming 777X widebody jet.

Ewbank’s letter also reveals that he has been interviewed about his concerns by the FBI, which suggests his allegations have at least been considered as part of the Justice Department’s probe into what went wrong on the 737 MAX and whether the actions of anyone at Boeing were criminal.

He mentions he has also delivered details of his allegations to the lead investigator on the U.S. House Committee on Transportation, chaired by Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore.

In 2014, during early work on the MAX’s development, Ewbank worked unsuccessfully to have Boeing upgrade the MAX’s flight-control systems by adding a new data measurement system called Synthetic Airspeed that would have served as a check on multiple sensors. If it had been implemented, he believes it might have prevented the fatal crashes.

Ewbank’s original internal ethics complaint, first reported last October by The Seattle Times, alleged that Boeing rejected his safety upgrades because of management’s focus on schedule and cost considerations and the insistence that anything that might require more pilot training would not be considered.

He also alleged that Boeing pushed regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to relax certification requirements for the airplane, particularly in regard to the cockpit systems for alerting pilots that something is wrong inflight.

Those systems on the MAX have been under scrutiny because during the two fatal MAX crashes that killed 346 people, pilots struggled to understand the cascade of warnings in their cockpits.

‘Hand-waving and deception’

Ewbank’s letter to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation was sent June 5, ahead of a public hearing Wednesday that featured scathing criticism of FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson for his agency’s lack of progress in addressing the lapses of oversight in certifying the MAX.

Ewbank criticizes not only Boeing for its design of the MAX but also the FAA for approving the design without proper oversight.

“The 737 MAX’s original certification was accomplished with hand-waving and deception to hide the numerous ways the 1960s-era design of the 737 does not meet current regulatory standards,” he wrote.

And he hit out at a recent Department of Transportation (DOT) advisory panel report on the MAX crashes that recommended only minor changes to the way airplanes are certified, preserving Boeing’s central role in that process. Ewbank called the report “a serious threat to aviation safety and the flying public.”

“If the FAA was truly regulating in the public interest, it would take action against Boeing for its continued deception and gross errors in the design and production of the 737 MAX by withdrawing Boeing’s production certificate,” he concluded.

Ansley Lacitis, deputy chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, said her office “was made aware of the letter right before the hearing” on Wednesday.

“The first step of a whistleblower investigation is to make contact with the whistleblower and we have done that,” Lacitis said. “We take these and other allegations seriously and continue to investigate them.”

In a statement, Boeing said company officials have not seen the letter.

“Boeing offers its employees a number of channels for raising concerns and complaints and has rigorous processes in place that ensure complaints receive thorough consideration and protect employee confidentiality,” the statement said. “Boeing does not comment on the substance or existence of such internal complaints.”

Boeing’s statement adds that “when the MAX returns to service, it will be one of the most thoroughly scrutinized aircraft in history, and we have full confidence in its safety.”

 767 APU Hanging at 30% During Start

During the APU engine start, the IGV (Inlet Guide Vanes) are supposed to be closed. This allows all incoming air to be directed into the combustion chamber. After start with a air demand (main engine start or air conditioning pack operation), the IGV vanes open allowing bleed air output.

We purposely pulled the IGV actuator arm out (vanes open) to see if it would would close them on initial rotation. It did not.

With the drain on the air bleed system, the APU could not accelerate beyond approximately 30% and it would shut down.

More troubleshooting here.

From Market Crumbs

Boeing has had a rough couple of years, starting with two separate 737 MAX crashes in October 2018 and March 2019, respectively, which killed a combined 346 people.

Boeing saw net total orders drop to negative 87 airplanes last year, its worst in decades. For comparison, its main competitor Airbus saw a net 768 orders last year.

Boeing's troubles continued into this year as production of the 737 MAX continues to remain halted. In January, Boeing reported zero net orders, while in February the company reported negative 28 net orders.

With Boeing already facing significant challenges, the coronavirus outbreak has added additional pressure to the company.

Boeing has made a handful of moves over the last month to bolster its financial position. The company drew down its entire $13.8 billion secured loan, halted hiring, suspended its dividend, as well as offered voluntary layoffs and early retirement packages.

Boeing is also seeking federal aid from the U.S. government, but won't do so if it requires the government to take an equity stake in the company.

Over the weekend Boeing announced it is "extending the temporary suspension of operations at all Puget Sound area and Moses Lake sites until further notice" after about 135 Boeing employees have tested positive for COVID-19.

"These actions are being taken in light of the company’s continuing focus on the health and safety of employees, current assessment of the spread of COVID-19 in Washington state, the reliability of the supply chain and additional recommendations from government health authorities," Boeing said in a statement.

The decision affects about 30,000 production employees, who will no longer receive pay after Wednesday. Despite still receiving medical benefits, they now must take vacation and sick time or apply for unemployment.

With things at Boeing going just about as badly as possible, it will be interesting to see how the company comes out of all of this.

Even once the coronavirus subsides, Boeing is still faced with its 737 MAX issues and lack of any net orders for its airplanes.

From Travel Pulse

By Donald Wood

Due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak in Washington, Boeing announced Monday it would temporarily shut down its Puget Sound production operations starting on March 25.

Boeing officials revealed in a public statement the temporary shutdown would last 14 days and impact the more than 70,000 employees in the Puget Sound region.

During the closure, employees will be asked to work from home as the company conducts full cleanup efforts and develops a “rigorous criteria for return to work.” Workers who can do their job from home will be paid for the initial 10 working days of the suspension.

“We will keep our employees, customers and supply chain top of mind as we continue to assess the evolving situation,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said in the release. “This is an unprecedented time for organizations and communities across the globe.”

Boeing’s announcement came just a day after a report from the Seattle Times (h/t KOMONews.com) said an employee at the company’s production plant in Everett died from coronavirus. The worker, identified as Elton Washington, reportedly worked for the manufacturer for 28 years.

Washington Governor Jay Inslee released a statement regarding the closure:

“I spoke with Boeing Commercial CEO Stan Deal early this morning. I applaud Boeing’s decision to implement an orderly shutdown and continue to pay its workers during this difficult time. Now is a time for bold actions like these, and we will continue to look at what can be done statewide.”

Last week, Boeing announced CEO Dave Calhoun and Board Chairman Larry Kellner would forego all pay until the end of 2020 and the company will suspend its dividend and extend its pause of any share repurchasing until further notice.

By Zero Hedge

Congress Rips Boeing's "Culture Of Concealment" & FAA's 'Jeopardizing' Public In Scathing 737 MAX Report

By Tyler Durden

In a sense finally making the long developing scandal official in terms of where blame lies and who covered it up, Congress has blasted Boeing's "culture of concealment" which recklessly pursued cost-cutting over safety, made worse by the Federal Aviation Administration’s woeful lack of oversight, leading to twin deadly crashes of Boeing's 737 MAX jets and 346 lives lost in late 2018 and March 2019. The report cites "efforts to obfuscate information" involving an automated system that "violated Boeing’s own internal design guidelines."

Preliminary findings issued by Democrats on the House Transportation Committee Friday afternoon found Boeing executives and FAA regulators ignored the fatal software glitch which was simply shipped by default with all new 737 MAX planes instead of being repaired.

Boeing “failed in its duty to identify key safety problems and to ensure they were adequately addressed during the certification process,” the House committee found. 

"Friday’s report details Boeing’s determination at various levels — years before the MAX won approval by the Federal Aviation Administration — to avoid putting any pilots through costly ground-simulator training," the WSJ writes. And further summarizes, "That single-minded goal was evident across Boeing’s engineering, marketing and management ranks, according to the report, and resulted in various efforts to mislead or withhold information from FAA officials during the lengthy certification process."

The Congressional report, which comes as the result of a series of five public hearings into the MAX's design and production after it was ground world-wide last March, also excoriated the FAA for its “grossly insufficient” review of the plane which ultimately "jeopardized the safety of the flying public” with its “inherent conflicts of interest” — even though it's supposed to be the final impartial safety watchdog.

Here are key damning conclusions from the report per The Seattle Times:

• Extensive efforts at Boeing to cut costs, maintain the MAX program schedule, and not slow down the MAX production line undermined the safety of the jet.
• Faulty assumptions led Boeing to fail to classify new flight control software on the MAX called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, as a safety-critical technology that demanded more scrutiny.
• In order to avoid greater FAA scrutiny and increased pilot training requirements, Boeing practiced a “Culture of Concealment” that withheld crucial information from the FAA, its airline customers, and pilots.
• Inherent conflicts of interest among authorized representatives of the FAA, who are Boeing employees authorized to perform certification work on behalf of the FAA, ”jeopardized the safety of the flying public.”
• Boeing’s influence over the FAA’s oversight resulted in FAA management rejecting safety concerns raised by the agency’s own technical experts at the behest of Boeing.

After these and other scathing critiques in the Congressional findings, the FAA instead of a full-frontal acknowledgement to the public of its role leading up to disasters involving hundreds of deaths and grieving relatives, merely lamely stated that “we are a learning agency and welcome the scrutiny.”

“The lessons learned from the investigations into the tragic accidents of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 will be a springboard to an even greater level of safety,” the FAA statement added. 

However, we doubt that few among the traveling public will find such an 'assurance' believable or comforting, also considering the potential expanding nature of the safety issues and cover-up, as the WSJ notes additionally: "More broadly, the reports also details examples of FAA managers overruling safety concerns of their own technical experts related to another Boeing airliner, the Boeing 787."

From Zero Hedge

By Tyler Durden

As if Boeing needed any more bad news.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) conducted an internal audit in December of the Boeing 737 Max and found wiring issues could potentially cause a "catastrophic" short circuit at the rear of the plane and lead to a crash, a senior engineer at Boeing and three people familiar with the matter told The New York Times.

Boeing is examining if two wiring harnesses at the rear of the plane are too close together that would result in an electric short that would cause the plane's tail to malfunction in flight, said one of the sources.

If Boeing decides to fix the wiring problem, it would mean that more than 800 Max jets would have to see wiring reconfiguration. 

Of course, Boeing told The Times that the fix is relatively simple. Spokesman Gordon Johndroe said Sunday the "identified issue is part of a rigorous process, and we are working with the FAA to perform the appropriate analysis. It would be premature to speculate as to whether this analysis will lead to any design changes."

It was unclear, however, if simple also means cheap, and some have speculated that a full-blown recall could cost tens ofd billions.

An FAA statement Sunday said investigators are "re-analyzing certain findings from a recent review of the proposed modifications to the Boeing 737 MAX." The agency will "ensure that all safety-related issues identified during this process are addressed."

The FAA said the wiring harnesses are too close together, located at the rear of the plane, would cause the motors that control the stabilizer, a horizontal fin on a plane's tail, to malfunction (short circuit) and could lead to a potentially "catastrophic" crash.

Max engines have also become another focus for FAA investigators.

All of these issues, of course, are separate from the MCAS software that was likely the cause of two separate Max crashes, killing 346 people.  New Max issues could delay the ungrounding even further. There is no clear timeline of when the planes will return to the air.

Meanwhile, confirming that things are going from bad to worse, the WSJ reported that Boeing is mulling raising more debt to "improve finances", read fund buybacks, as costs related to the grounding of its 737 MAX are raising. The paper reports that Boeing is also considering cutting CAPEX, freezing acquisitions and cutting on R&D to save cash. In total, analysts expect Boeing to raise as much as $5BN in additional debt to help cover expenditures that could rise to $15BN in 1H 2020. It was not clear if all of this new money, or just most of it, would to repurchasing BA shares.

From The New York Times

The company expressed regret at the embarrassing communications it sent to investigators on Thursday, which included a comment that “this airplane is designed by clowns, who are in turn supervised by monkeys.”

By Natalie Kitroeff

Boeing employees mocked federal rules, talked about deceiving regulators and joked about potential flaws in the 737 Max as it was being developed, according to over a hundred pages of internal messages delivered Thursday to congressional investigators.

From Zero Hedge

By Tyler Durden

Lawmakers have finally followed up last week's bombshell release of internal Boeing communications with more extremely damning internal messages exchanged by employees. This time, the messages revealed that Boeing employees successfully persuaded Indonesia's Lion Air to forego forcing their pilots to use a full flight simulator to train them on the 737 MAX 8.

According to Bloomberg, which published unredacted copies of the messages, offering full flight simulator training to Lion Air would undermine a key selling point of the 737 MAX 8: The fact that Boeing advertised the plane as needing no additional training for pilots and crew, apart from a basic computer-based course.

One Boeing employee wrote in June 2017 - a little over a year before the deadly Lion Air crash in October 2018 that helped inspire the universal grounding of the plane by regulators - that "friggin Lion Air was pushing for a "flight sim."

However, the Boeing employee promised his co-workers that he would "unscrew" the situation.

"Now friggin Lion Air might need a sim to fly the MAX, and maybe because of their own stupidity. I’m scrambling trying to figure out how to unscrew this now! idiots," one Boeing employee wrote in June 2017 text messages obtained by the company and released by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

In response to news about Lion Air's request, another employee exclaimed that their sister airline, Malindo Air, was already flying the MAX without need simulators.

In response, a Boeing colleague replied: “WHAT THE F%$&!!!! But their sister airline is already flying it!” That was an apparent reference to Malindo Air, the Malaysian-based carrier that was the first to fly the Max commercially.

However, Boeing's fixation on the bottom line ended up being a penny wise and a pound foolish. After all, in a report on the Oct. 29, 2018 accident, Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee explicitly cited a failure by Boeing to tell pilots about MCAS, a flight control feature that has been implicated in MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. 

Apparently, it only took Boeing employees, including the company's chief technical pilot, to convince Indonesia to forego the training.

The communications include a 2017 email from Boeing’s chief technical pilot on the 737 in which he crowed to colleagues: "Looks like my jedi mind trick worked again!" The email was sent two days after the earlier messages expressing alarm about Lion Air potentially demanding simulator training.

Attached was a forwarded email exchange in which the person warned an unnamed recipient against offering simulator training for Max pilots, pushing instead for the computer-based course that regulators had already approved for flight crews transitioning to the Max from earlier 737 models.

"I am concerned that if [redacted] chooses to require a Max simulator for its pilots beyond what all other regulators are requiring that it will be creating a difficult and unnecessary training burden for your airline, as well as potentially establish a precedent in your region for other Max customers," the Boeing pilot wrote in the forwarded message.

While Lion Air was not identified in the redacted emails, the discussions are consistent with those Boeing held with Lion Air at the time, according to people familiar with the matter.

Once again, lawmakers have released damning communications from internal Boeing employees revealing a glaring negligence that appears to have been a cause, in part, of two deadly accidents that killed a combined 346 people.

These exchanges will almost certainly be cited in lawsuits by victims' family members alleging gross negligence on Boeing's behalf.

And once again, Boeing shares don't appear to care.

From Zero Hedge

By Tyler Durden

Slipping through the cracks of the Boeing controversy - which has taken on new twists and turns almost daily - were comments we recently uncovered by a former Boeing quality manager, who said last month that he thinks Boeing's problems aren't just limited to the 737.

John Barnett was a quality manager for Boeing for 30 years before he was transferred to South Carolina to work on the 787, according to Big Think.

It was there that a new leadership team who had previously worked on Boeing's military projects began overseeing work on the commercial airliner. 

Barnett says that team lowered safety standards significantly. He stated: "They started pressuring us to not document defects, to work outside the procedures, to allow defective material to be installed without being corrected. They started bypassing procedures and not maintaining configurement control of airplanes, not maintaining control of non-conforming parts — they just wanted to get the planes pushed out the door and make the cash register ring."

At first, it was just administrative issues, Barnett said. But then, it got worse.

"Over time it got worse and worse. They began to ignore defective parts installed on the planes and basic issues related to aircraft safety," he said.

According to Barnett, one audit uncovered that 25% of oxygen masks didn't work. Defective parts were getting lost in the system before being discovered flying on aircraft. Barnett says he remembered "several defective bulkheads being installed without having been repaired."

He also said that there was an issue with metal slivers. 3-inch-long slivers of razor-sharp metal would fall into areas where planes have sensitive wiring and electronics, he said. 

He continued: "That surface below the floor board is where all of your flight control wires are, that's where all of your electronic equipment is. It controls systems on the airplane, it controls the power of the airplane. All of your electronic equipment is down where all of these metal slivers are falling."

He said these slivers would cause shorts and fires at the plant. As planes vibrate, these metal slivers work their way into wire bundles and can cause issues during flights, he said. Barnett filed complaints with multiple members of the Boeing team, which he said led to his reassignment to a department that isolated him.

The FAA performed an audit substantiating his claims and even telling Boeing that no more planes could be delivered with those metal slivers. Meanwhile, 800 planes that include them have already been delivered and Boeing felt customers didn't need to be informed.  

"Every 787 out there has these slivers out there," Barnett said.

Barnett also filed a complaint with OSHA, which is reportedly still under investigation. 

He concluded: "...as far as the 787, I would change flights before I would fly a 787. I've told my family — please don't fly a 787. Fly something else. Try to get a different ticket. I want the people to know what they are riding on."

From Zero Hedge

"Absolutely Unacceptable" - Leaked Boeing Memo Shows 'Debris' Found In 737 MAX Fuel-Tanks

By Tyler Durden

With airline after airline pushing back their 'return-to-service' dates based on Boeing's total lack of clarity on the path forward for the 737 MAX, the troubled aircraft maker (and the troubled aircraft) now faces more problems.

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

To be clear about what 'debris' means, Reuters  details that:

"an industrial term for rags, tools, metal shavings and other materials left behind by workers during the production process."

And notes that this 'debris' problem has been a quality control issue for various Boeing aircraft, such as its KC-46 tankers.

Foreign-object debris (FOD) “is absolutely unacceptable. One escape is one too many,” Mark Jenks, a Boeing vice president and general manager of the 737 program, said in a message to employees that was viewed by Reuters.

“With your help and focus, we will eliminate FOD from our production system,”

The FOD problem on the MAX was first reported Tuesday on Scott Hamilton’s Leeham.net aviation site:

“There’s a systemic issue with Boeing’s quality control that hasn’t been corralled yet,” said Hamilton in an interview.

“This is not related to the MAX crashes or exclusively a MAX issue. Boeing has these FOD issues on other airplane programs.”

A Boeing spokesman confirmed the memo’s authenticity; and Boeing now having to inspect more than 400 stored 737 Max jets, but Bernard Choi said “it’s still undecided if we will inspect the rest” of the MAX fleet - another 385 aircraft that were delivered to customers but have been grounded for almost a year and are parked at airfields around the world.

“Obviously, we’ll do what’s right for safety,” Choi added.

Boeing spokesman Chaz Bickers was, however, careful to claim that the company does not see the debris as contributing to delays in the jet’s return to service. (The inspections will take two to three days per aircraft. Fuel must be drained from the wings before a mechanic can go in and do a thorough check.).

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was aware that Boeing “is conducting a voluntary” inspection for debris in the undelivered aircraft “as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to ensure manufacturing quality.”

It may delay the airlines' decision to accept delivery of the jets though (as its not exactly reassuring to crew members and passengers of the company’s commitment to manufacturing quality and safety!)

From Reuters

Airbus beats goal with 863 jet deliveries in 2019, ousts Boeing from top spot

By Tim Hepher

Airbus has become the world’s largest planemaker for the first time since 2011 after delivering a forecast-beating 863 aircraft in 2019, seizing the crown from embattled U.S. rival Boeing (BA.N), airport and tracking sources said on Wednesday.

A reversal in the pecking order between the two giants had been expected as a crisis over Boeing’s grounded 737 MAX drags into 2020. But the record European data further underscores the distance Boeing must travel to recoup its market position.

Airbus, which had been forced by its own industrial problems to cut its 2019 delivery goal by 2-3% in October, deployed extra resources until hours before midnight to reach 863 aircraft for the year, compared with its revised target of 860 jets.

Deliveries rose 7.9 % from 800 aircraft in 2018.

Airbus declined to comment on the figures, which must be audited before they can be finalized and published.

Planemakers receive most of their revenues when aircraft are delivered - minus accumulated progress payments - so the end-year delivery performance is closely monitored by investors.

Airbus’s tally, which included around 640 single-aisle aircraft, broke industry records after it diverted thousands of workers and canceled holidays to complete a buffer stock of semi-finished aircraft waiting to have their cabins adjusted.

Airbus has been hit by delays in fitting the complex new layouts on A321neo jets assembled in Hamburg, Germany, resulting in dozens of these and other models being stored in hangars to await last-minute configurations and the arrival of more labor.

Such out-of-sequence work drives up costs and could have a modest impact on Airbus profit margins, but the impact will be largely blunted by the high volume of planes and already solid profitability for such single-aisle aircraft, analysts say.

Still, the problems in fitting complex cabins have curtailed Airbus’s ability to take advantage of the market turmoil surrounding Boeing’s 737 MAX - grounded since March following two fatal accidents.

Boeing delivered 345 mainly long-haul jets between January and November, less than half the number of 704 achieved in the same period of 2018, when the MAX was being delivered normally. For the whole of 2018, Boeing had delivered 806 aircraft.

Airbus production plants traditionally halt over Christmas and New Year. But the company’s delivery centers and completion facilities were humming well into the afternoon of New Year’s Eve to allow Asian and other airlines to fly away new jets.

From Zero Hedge

By Tyler Durden

Sources have told The Wall Street Journal that Boeing could temporarily halt production of the 737 Max amid concerns the timeline of ungrounding the aircraft could be pushed further out. The decision to disclose the fate of the 737 Max production could arrive as early as Monday.

Boeing hosted a regular board meeting on Sunday in Chicago. Sources said the fate of the 737 Max production comes days after US regulators criticized Boeing for providing unrealistic timelines for when the plane will return to the skies.

In April, Boeing slashed production by 20% from 52 to 42 planes per month. A more extended cut or even production halt could be absolutely damaging to the global aerospace industry, as any reduction in planes could ripple down the supply chain and cause financial hardships for suppliers. 

"We continue to work closely with the FAA and global regulators towards certification and the safe return to service of the Max," Boeing stated. "We will continue to assess production decisions based on the timing and conditions of return to service, which will be based on regulatory approvals and may vary by jurisdiction."

We've noted in the past that production cuts could have severe consequences for the US economy. Over 600 suppliers provide 600,000 parts needed for each plane; the brunt of the shock would be seen down the chain at smaller firms. 

Some Max suppliers have already cut production rates after Boeing reduced plane output by 20% in April. There are other reports that some suppliers have already furloughed employees and shut down equipment as the groundings enter the ninth month.

"It's easier to ramp down gradually and then ramp back up," said John Scannell, chief executive of Moog Inc., which makes control motors for the MAX.

The upcoming production decision isn't easy for Boeing since two of its Max planes experienced flight control system malfunctions and crashed in the past year or so, killing 346 people.

From Zero Hedge

By Tyler Durden

Over the past nine months, the WSJ has led the media pack when it comes to scoops about the lapses at Boeing and the FAA that allowed the Boeing 737 MAX 8 to continue flying, even after a crash in Indonesia raised questions about the plane's safety that were apparently ignored, because a similar crash happened in Ethiopia less than six months later, bringing the combined death toll to above 300.

Earlier on Wednesday, Boeing shares dropped on reports that the 737 MAX won't fly again before the end of the year, even as deliveries "could" resume later this month.

These revelations about the culture at both Boeing and the FAA show very clearly how the agency has lost its way, and how its lapses in oversight opened the door to unimaginable human suffering.

WSJ reporters got their hands on an FAA internal report that was published back in November 2018. An internal FAA analysis of the Lion Air cash, it's expected to be released in full for the House committee hearing Wednesday.

According to the report, experts spotted the risks in the 737 MAX 8's anti-stall system, MCAS, and warned that these planes could average more than one crash a year.

In an aviation industry that sometimes goes almost a decade without an accident, these numbers are obviously unacceptable.

On Tuesday, an FAA spokesman delivered a statement to WSJ: "It was clear from the beginning that an unsafe condition existed," adding that the analysis "provided additional context in helping determine the mitigation action." In an email, the spokesman said such analyses tend to overstate risk because they take the most conservative approach and because specifically identified problems likely appeared more serious than they did in the operating fleet.

After Lion Air, the FAA’s analysis projected as many as 15 similar catastrophic accidents globally over the life of the MAX fleet (roughly 30 to 45 years) unless major fixes were made to a particular automated flight-control system (fixes that Boeing has scrambled to make over the past year).

"The potential for 15 projected crashes “would be an unacceptable number in the modern aviation-safety world," said Alan Diehl, a retired FAA and Pentagon air-safety official, who hasn’t had any involvement in the MAX crisis.

Even still, it might take more than that to win back public confidence, since WSJ and Boeing characterized the MAX as the most crash-prone Boeing model in modern history.

In total, the 737 MAX was projected to log as many crashes s Boeing’s 757, 767, 777, 787 and the latest 747 models combined. The MAX fleet was eventually anticipated to be nearly 5,000 jets world-wide, slightly larger than the combined global fleet of the earlier models that are still in service while the other fleets together total slightly more than 3,800 aircraft.

But in the document obtained by WSJ, the FAA anticipates that Boeing will update the flight control software on the 737 MAX 8 within the next seven or eight months. Of course, there were more deaths before the new software could be finished.

The FAA document anticipated that in roughly seven months, Boeing would devise, test and with the FAA’s approval install revised software for MCAS, the suspect stall-prevention system that led to the October 2018 crash in Indonesia. Meanwhile, the FAA also concluded that it could buy time to prevent another accident by reiterating to airline crews world-wide how to respond in the event of a similar MCAS misfire. If crews were aware of the risk and knew how to respond, the FAA determined it was acceptable to let the planes continue carrying passengers until a permanent design change was in place. That fix is still in progress.

More than any other previous piece of evidence, this document exposes the Boeing-FAA cabal and how corporations and the government conspired to put the lives of millions of unsuspecting travelers at risk.

The Independent

By Simon Calder

A former Boeing engineer has claimed that the planemaker cut corners on safety aboard the Boeing 787.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50293927" John Barnett told the BBC that some passengers on the flagship long-haul jet, known as the Dreamliner, could have been left with no oxygen in the event of a sudden decompression.

He said that tests at the South Carolina assembly line suggested one in four of the aircraft’s personal oxygen systems could fail.

Boeing, whose safety culture is under intense scrutiny following two fatal crashes of the 737 Max, has denied the accusations.

Mr Barnett was a quality control manager at the Boeing plant in Charleston for three decades.

In April 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html" he told the New York Times that he had discovered clusters of metal slivers that, he said, were dangerously close to flight control wiring.

“I haven’t seen a plane out of Charleston yet that I’d put my name on saying it’s safe and airworthy,” Mr Barnett said at the time.

He has now told the BBC that some of the oxygen cylinders fitted onboard were faulty.

Part of his job was to “decommission” equipment that had had to be replaced – typically because of minor damage during assembly. The work included discharging oxygen cylinders.

Emergency oxygen is carried on every passenger jet in case of sudden depressurisation, as happened to https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/southwest-airlines-latest-safety-record-passenger-died-ryanair-easyjet-qantas-a8313751.html" Southwest flight 1380 on a flight from New York to Dallas in April 2018.

While the Boeing 737 was flying at 32,000 feet, an uncontained engine failure broke a window. The oxygen system worked normally, but a passenger who was partially sucked out of the aircraft lost her life.

 

Mr Barnett said that some 787 cylinders did not discharge as they were designed to do, and in a subsequent test of 300 such cylinders “straight out of stock”, 75 were found to be faulty.

He complained to his managers and subsequently to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), but the safety regulator said that Boeing was dealing with the issue.

Boeing told the BBC that in 2017 it had identified some oxygen bottles that were not deploying properly, but said: “We removed those bottles from production so that no defective bottles were placed on airplanes, and we addressed the matter with our supplier.”

The 787 had a troubled introduction into service. After lithium batteries on some planes combusted, https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/simon-calder/simon-calder-dreamliner-dont-fret-about-the-jet-yet-8457228.html" the Dreamliner was grounded for three months.

It is now one of the most successful aircraft, with British Airways, Norwegian, Tui Airways and Virgin Atlantic among many using the aircraft – though some 787s are currently grounded because of https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/christmas-flight-cancellations-rolls-royce-trent-1000-engine-turbine-blade-failure-boeing-787-air-a8099201.html" faults with their Rolls-Royce engines.

Mr Barnett also claimed that workers fitted faulty parts from scrap bins to aircraft on the production line.

Boeing said it had “implemented corrective actions to prevent recurrence”. 

The former manager told the BBC: “Based on my years of experience and past history of plane accidents, I believe it's just a matter of time before something big happens with a 787.”

He is currently engaged in legal action against Boeing about what he says is the company’s adverse impact on his career.

The planemaker says: “Boeing has always focused on the safety of its products and people.

“We are more committed than ever to our shared responsibility to design, build and service the safest products: safe for all the teammates who design and build them, safe for the passengers who fly on them and safe for the people who service them.”

From Zero Hedge

European And Middle Eastern Regulators Raise Scrutiny Of 777X As Confidence In Boeing, FAA Plummets

By Tyler Durden

In the latest blow to Boeing, whose sagging shares are helping to weigh on the Dow in Wednesday's thin pre-holiday trade, WSJ has published a story claiming that regulators in Europe and the Middle East are ratcheting up their scrutiny of the new 777x. The news followed a report about a failed stress test by mere hours.

The move marks the end of an era for American aviation, when international regulators simply trusted the US to handle oversight. It's an important sign of the confidence that has been lost as Boeing struggles to move on from the crashes, and mass groundings, of the 737 MAX 8.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said in a statement it is performing a “concurrent validation” of the FAA’s certification of Boeing’s 777X, a new variant of the company’s popular wide-body jet. The plane is expected to be the first new airliner design from either Boeing or rival Airbus SE to come to market since the MAX crisis began. Two recent crashes of that jet exposed problems with its flight-control systems and FAA certification procedures. Regulators around the world grounded the entire fleet, creating turmoil for airlines and passengers world-wide.

The national regulator in the United Arab Emirates, meanwhile, also plans to separately scrutinize the certification process of the 777X, according to people familiar with the matter. While a small agency, the Emirati General Civil Aviation Authority wields outsize influence over the future of the 777X. That is because the U.A.E.’s state-owned carrier, Emirates Airline, is one of the new jet’s biggest customers. It is slated to be the first airline to fly the airliner in 2021.

According to WSJ, the regulators aren't insisting on performing their own complete independent certifications, rather, they're going to scrutinize the process used by the FAA.

European and Emirati regulators aren’t envisioning a full-blown certification of their own. Instead, they will independently scrutinize the processes used by the FAA and Boeing related to a number of specific systems on the plane, including its flight-control system and Boeing’s safety classification system, according to people familiar with the matter. They will also individually review the plane’s unique folding wings, these people said.

These reviews are perhaps the clearest sign yet that the FAA's status as the world's most reliable regulator has been lost, something that President Trump will need to blame on President Obama.

The separate reviews further undercut the FAA’s once-unchallenged stature as the world’s most influential regulator. The agency had lost credibility in the days after the crash of an Ethiopian Airways 737 MAX in March. That followed the deadly crash of a Lion Air MAX, under similar circumstances, late last year. The crashed killed 346 people in total.

There's no question that this is terrible news for Boeing, Fortunately, according to the latest reports, the 737 MAX should be back in the skies by early next year.

* * *

With the FAA reportedly preparing to inspect every 737 MAX individually before it signs off on the planes' return to the air - a decision that will likely delay recertification and add to Boeing's losses - the latest bad news for the aerospace firm comes from its hometown (well, sort of, Boeing is officially based in Chicago but the bulk of its operations are located in Washington State) paper, the Seattle Times.

The paper reported that a recent stress test for a new model of the Boeing 777 resulted in the fuselage (a fancy term for the body of the plane) ripping apart just below the FAA's official threshold for certification.

Driving the story home, the paper also published a grainy cellphone pic of the damage:

Back in September, the ST and a few other outlets reported that there were problems with the stress test, and that a door had flown off the handle. This, as it turns out, is not only incorrect, but it minimizes the seriousness of what actually happened.

During the test, the plane's fuselage "split dramatically" along the underside of the plane near where the landing wheels are stowed. The body of the plane was rent open with the force of a bomb. Workers in another hanger nearby said the ground the shook and they heard a load explosion. The Seattle Times clarified that their earlier reporting about a door flying off its hinges was mistaken: the 777's doors close from the inside and are larger than the holes they cover, but one door was seriously damaged.

When Boeing tested the original 777 model in 1995, it kept going until the aluminum wings snapped at 1.54 times limit load. On the 787, it chose to stop at 1.5 and then ease the composite wings back down again. Breaking a pair of composite wings could result in release of unhealthy fibers in the air, so it’s likely that with the 777X also having composite wings, that was the plan again this time.

But as Boeing personnel along with six FAA observers watched from the windows of a control room, at 1.48 times limit load - 99% of ultimate load - the structure gave way. Under the center fuselage, just aft of the wing and the well where the landing gear wheels are stowed, the extreme compression load caused the plane’s aluminum skin to buckle and rupture, according to the person familiar with the details.

The resulting depressurization was explosive enough that workers in the next bay heard it clearly. One worker said he heard “a loud boom, and the ground shook.”

Then there was the secondary damage...

That then caused secondary damage: The photos show that the fuselage skin split part of the way up the side of the airplane, along with areas of bent and twisted structure that extended through the area around a passenger door.

A day after the incident, based on incomplete information, The Seattle Times and other media outlets incorrectly reported that a cargo door had blown out.

Unlike the plane’s cargo doors, which hinge outward, the passenger doors on airliners are plug-type doors that only open inward and are larger than the hole they close. But the structure around that passenger door just aft of the 777X wing was so damaged that the pressure blew the door out and it fell to the floor.

These secondary damage sites — the rip up the side of the fuselage, the door blown out — alarming as they might seem, are not a concern to air safety engineers. “The doors were not a precipitating factor,” said the person familiar with the details.

It’s the initiating failure, the weakness in that localized area of the keel, that Boeing must now fix.

As uncomfortable as it sounds, Boeing probably won't need to do a retest: Since the rupture occurred so close to the threshold level, the FAA will likely allow Boeing to make the necessary changes independently and then show its work via analysis.

A safety engineer at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), speaking anonymously without permission from the agency, said that because the blowout happened so close to the target load, it barely counts as a failure.

Boeing will have so much data gathered on the way to the 99% stage that it can now compare with its computer models to analyze the failure precisely, the FAA engineer said. It can then reinforce the weak area, and prove by analysis that that’s sufficient to cover the extra 1%.

One engineer said the rip actually isn't anything to worry about.

The engineer said it’s not that unusual to find a vulnerability when taking an airplane structure to the edge of destruction.

"The good news is they found it and can address it," the FAA engineer said. "They found a problem they can fix. They can beef up the structure based on analysis."

And here are some more details about the test, including an explanation of the FAA's standards, as well as what happens to the test plane during the test.

The test conducted that day was the final test of this airplane, which was fixed in a test rig inside the Everett factory specifically to be stressed close to destruction. The jet was surrounded by scaffolding and multiple orange weights hung from the airframe. Wires were hooked to instrumentation that studded the surface to measure every stress and deflection, the data monitored in real time by engineers sitting at control room computers.

As the test neared its climax, weighted pulleys had bent the jet’s giant carbon composite wings upward more than 28 feet from their resting position. That’s far beyond the expected maximum deflection in normal flight of about 9 feet, according to a person familiar with the details.

At the same time, the fuselage was bent downward at the extreme front and aft ends with millions of pounds of force. And the interior of the plane was pressurized beyond normal levels to about 10 pounds per square inch — not typically a requirement for this test, but something Boeing chose to do.

All this simulated the loads in a flight maneuver where a pilot would experience a force of 3.75 G, compared to the maximum of 1.3 G in normal flight.

The combination of the bending forces  on the wing and fuselage created a high compression load on the bottom centerline of the fuselage — the keel — according to the person, who asked for anonymity because the details are sensitive.

Federal certification regulations require engineers to ratchet up the forces until  they reach “ultimate load” — defined as 1.5 times the “limit load,” which is the maximum that would ever be experienced in normal flight — and hold it there for at least three seconds.

Unfortunately for Boeing, traders weren't in the mood for excuses, and sent the company's shares lower in premarket trade...even as the broader market was set to open at record highs.