Boeing sharply denied published allegations Sunday that "shoddy production" and oversight at its North Charleston, South Carolina, factory threatens the safety of the company's long-haul 787. The report, published Saturday by The New York Times, comes as Boeing is the subject of multiple investigations into the certification process for the 737 Max series. Brad Zaback, site leader of the South Carolina facility and GM of Boeing's 787 program, said The Times distorted information and rehashed old stories "that have long ago been put to rest." Zaback said the company invited The Times to "visit Boeing South Carolina once they contacted us" but they declined. The Times said Sunday night that Boeing made its offer of a tour Friday and that the newspaper declined to delay Saturday's scheduled publication. <br/>
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Integration of the former Bombardier CSeries program into Airbus is progressing well, the head of Airbus in Canada said. “We will deliver more aircraft in the second half of the year than we did in the first half as we continue to ramp up,” said Philippe Balducci, CE of the Airbus-led partnership that now builds the narrowbody airliner as the A220. “Our first focus was to preserve the operations to ensure continuity and make sure customers were not impacted. That has been successful,” he said. The next step was to begin the integration work to bring the A220 program into the Airbus family. All commercial activity, including marketing and sales, is now within Airbus and the transfer of procurement contracts from Bombardier is almost complete, Balducci said. <br/>
US transportation secretary Elaine Chao said Monday she named 4 experts to a blue-ribbon committee to review the FAA's aircraft certification process after 2 deadly Boeing 737 MAX crashes. Chao said she was naming NASA's former aviation safety program director Amy Pritchett and Gretchen Haskins, CE of HeliOffshore Ltd, an international expert in aviation safety and a former US Air Force officer. She also named Kenneth Hylander, chief safety officer at Amtrak and a former senior safety executive at Delta and Northwest airlines, and J. David Grizzle, chairman of the board of Republic Airways and a former FAA chief counsel. The committee is "specifically tasked to review the 737 MAX 800 certification process from 2012 to 2017, and recommend improvements to the certification process." <br/>
Nine groups representing commercial and general aviation are calling on FAA not to follow through with a proposed pilot drug testing study, saying “deceptively and unknowingly” testing thousands of pilot urine samples does not comply with legal requirements and would “further erode the trust” between the pilot community and FAA aviation medical examiners. The proposed study was developed in response to guidance from a NTSB recommendation that FAA conduct a study to evaluate the prevalence of over-the-counter, prescription and illicit drug use among pilots and compare the results with findings from a previous NTSB study of pilots who died in aviation accidents. The aviation groups said the FAA study “is flawed and will not accomplish its goals.” <br/>