US and Canadian carriers wrestled with customer calls and flight cancellations on Thursday after the two countries followed other nations in grounding Boeing’s 737 MAX planes because of safety concerns. Southwest, the largest operator of the 737 MAX in the world with 34 jets, said it was experiencing unusually high call volumes and had cancelled 39 MAX flights. The low-cost carrier, a launch customer of the MAX 8 in 2017, said it was servicing those flights with available 737-700s and 737-800s. Canada and the United States announced on Wednesday they would ground the MAX planes, citing new satellite data and evidence from the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on Sunday that killed 157 people. American Airlines, with 24 MAX 8s, planned to cancel around 85 flights per day as a result of the ban, while servicing some of those flights with other aircraft such as the 737-800. Air Canada which operated 24 MAX jets had a message on its customer service line saying that because of “unforeseen circumstances,” call volumes temporarily exceeded its capacity to answer or place calls on hold. Air Canada could not be reached for comment on Thursday. In a statement on Wednesday, the carrier said it operated 75 737MAX flights daily out of a total schedule of approximately 1,600 daily flights system-wide, representing less than 6% of the network’s total flying.<br/>
general
Boeing said Thursday it was pausing deliveries of its 737 MAX aircraft to customers following the grounding of the jetliner by the United States and around the world. The 737 MAX has been banned from flying in most countries after an Ethiopian Airlines crash on Sunday that killed all 157 people on board. <br/>
Boeing’s 737 MAX 8 and 9 planes will be grounded for weeks if not longer until a software upgrade can be tested and installed, US lawmakers said on Thursday, as officials in France prepare to begin analyzing the black boxes from a jet that crashed in Ethiopia. Boeing said it had paused deliveries of its fastest-selling 737 MAX aircraft built at its factory near Seattle but continues to produce its single-aisle jets at full speed while dealing with the worldwide fleet’s grounding. Investigators in France will be seeking clues into Sunday’s deadly Ethiopian Airlines crash after take-off from Addis Ababa killed 157 people from 35 nations in the second such calamity involving Boeing’s plane since October. Possible links between the accidents have rocked the aviation industry, scared passengers, and left the world’s biggest planemaker scrambling to prove the safety of a money-spinning model intended to be the standard for decades.<br/>
Weeks after a deadly crash involving a Boeing plane last October, company officials met separately with the pilot unions at Southwest and American Airlines. The officials said they planned to update the software for their 737 Max jets, the plane involved in the disaster, by around the end of 2018. It was the last time the Southwest pilots union heard from Boeing, and months later, the carriers are still waiting for a fix. After a second 737 Max crashed, on Sunday in Ethiopia, United States regulators said the software update would be ready by April. “Boeing was going to have a software fix in the next five to six weeks,” said Michael Michaelis, the top safety official at the American Airlines pilots union and a Boeing 737 captain. “We told them, ‘Yeah, it can’t drag out.’ And well, here we are.” This delay is now part of the intense scrutiny over Boeing’s response after the first air disaster, a Lion Air accident that killed 189 people in Indonesia. The second crash, involving an Ethiopian Airlines flight that killed 157 people, bore similarities to the first, pointing to potential problems with the automated system that requires the update. The planned fix was “designed to detect the problem,” said Jon Weaks, the president of Southwest’s pilot union, “and keep it from recurring.” Boeing officials told Southwest union leaders that they didn’t believe any extra training was necessary beyond informing the pilots of how the software fix would function.<br/>
Ethiopia has sent black boxes from a crashed Boeing 737 jet to France for decoding after refusing to hand them to US authorities that had kept the Max model flying after most other regulators grounded it. The flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders have arrived at the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses, France’s air-accident investigator, with coordination meetings underway and technical work set to start Friday. The BEA said it will download data but hasn’t been asked to analyze it. Ethiopian Airlines, which operated the crashed jet, says the decision to send the black boxes to a European agency was a strategic one after the FAA was left isolated in arguing that the Max should continue flying. The US regulator finally grounded the model Wednesday amid mounting concern about similarities between the African tragedy and a crash in Indonesia, in which a computer system took control of a flight. Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation earlier declined to work on the boxes, saying it wasn’t technically possible. France has a direct link to the crash, which killed 157, since the Max’s engines are made by the CFM International venture of General Electric and Paris-based Safran. The choice of the BEA for the decoding of the recorders still represents a snub for US regulators used to taking a leading role in probes of Boeing planes. The NTSB will still have a role given that the 737 is made in Seattle, and plans to send three investigators to France to help the BEA with the downloading and analysis, according to a statement.<br/>
UK and US regulators have agreed a new bilateral deal which provides for current safety regulation between the two countries to be kept in place in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The UK Civil Aviation Authority says the agreement – signed with the UK Department for Transportation and the US FAA – is intended to ensure that co-operation between the two countries will "remain the same", even if a no-deal Brexit means that the UK is no longer able to remain a member of the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). There would be "no change" to maintenance oversight, with the UK and USA committed to mutual recognition of approvals, says the CAA. Products, parts and appliances manufactured by UK and US companies will continue to be accepted in both countries. The CAA will permit the operation by UK companies of aircraft designed in the USA and previously validated by EASA. Design-validation processes will be "similar" to those implemented under the EU-US bilateral air services agreement, says the UK regulator. The exception is that an application will need to be made to the CAA for FAA validation of designs produced in the UK. The CAA says the new agreement – which is part of its no-deal contingency planning – gives assurances to airlines and aerospace companies in both countries that transatlantic trade would in a no-deal scenario continue "with minimal change" to the current oversight regime.<br/>
Embraer delivered 90 commercial aircraft last year, the manufacturer confirmed March 14, in line with what the company advised in January, but its financial results for 2018 and expectations over closing two Boeing mergers left analysts and investors underwhelmed. “We view these results as modestly negative,” Credit Suisse analysts said. “While fourth-quarter 2018 was largely in line with the company’s pre-announced expectations from January, the [results] nevertheless came in light of Wall Street estimates.” The Brazilian company also said it expected the joint venture proposals with Boeing to close “at the end of 2019,” which analysts interpreted as a slip from the “by the end of 2019” or “late 2019” forecasts offered earlier. Managers did not provide much more information but reiterated that the deals still require approval from antitrust authorities and satisfaction of other customary conditions. Embraer shareholders approved the moves late last month. The company reported 2018 revenue of $5.07b, which it said was close to the $5.1b it forecast in January, but apparently stock watchers were hoping for the company to beat those projections. Embraer reported almost $5.9 billion in revenue for 2017. Specifically, Q4 2018 revenue was about 1.6% off what Wall Street had hoped, according to Credit Suisse.<br/>