general

Boeing did not tell US regulators for more than a year that it inadvertently made an alarm alerting pilots to a mismatch of flight data optional on the 737 MAX, instead of standard as on earlier 737s, but insisted on Sunday the missing display represented no safety risk. The US planemaker has been trying for weeks to dispel suggestions that it made airlines pay for safety features after it emerged that an alert designed to show discrepancies in Angle of Attack readings from two sensors was optional on the 737 MAX. Erroneous data from a sensor responsible for measuring the angle at which the wing slices through the air - known as the Angle of Attack - is suspected of triggering a flawed piece of software that pushed the plane downward in two recent crashes. Boeing said it only discovered once deliveries of the 737 MAX had begun in 2017 that the so-called AOA Disagree alert was optional instead of standard as it had intended, but added that was not critical safety data. An FAA official said Sunday that Boeing waited 13 months before informing the agency in November 2018. By becoming optional, the alert had been treated in the same way as a separate indicator showing raw AOA data, which is seldom used by commercial pilots and had been an add-on for years. “Neither the angle of attack indicator nor the AOA Disagree alert are necessary for the safe operation of the airplane,” Boeing said. “They provide supplemental information only, and have never been considered safety features on commercial jet transport airplanes.”<br/>

The FAA says more than a dozen safety inspectors at two key field offices did not complete a required formal training course, but that inspectors who reviewed the Boeing 737 Max jet were fully certified. Separately on Friday, a group of aviation experts from nine countries finished their first meeting to review the FAA's approval of the Max, which has been grounded since mid-March after two crashes killed 346 people. The review of FAA's work is expected to last several months, but it is separate from decisions by regulators in the US and overseas on whether to let airlines resume flights with the Max. In a letter and other documents made public Friday, FAA acting administrator Daniel Elwell repeated that those inspectors were fully certified. However, Ellwell said, 16 of 22 other safety inspectors in Seattle and Long Beach, California, have not completed a formal training course required for their jobs, and 11 aren't qualified for the course because they aren't certified flight instructors. Elwell said the inspectors had on-the-job training, which was also acceptable to perform some duties. He said the FAA is addressing the "confusion" and will revise its inspector-training requirements by September. FAA had previously disclosed that a manager who retaliated against an employee who raised the training issues no longer works for the agency.<br/>

Federal investigators on Saturday began searching for what caused a Boeing jetliner with 143 people on board to slide off a runway into a shallow river while landing at a Jacksonville, Florida, military base during a thunderstorm, injuring 22 people. The Boeing 737-800 chartered by the US military was arriving from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba with 136 passengers and seven crew members when it slid into the St. Johns River at the end of the 9,000-foot runway at Naval Air Station Jacksonville on Friday night, authorities said. Officials raised the count of people injured to 22, from 21, after a three-month-old child was admitted to a local hospital for observation, said Capt. Michael Connor, commanding officer at the Jacksonville station. NTSB investigators have recovered an undamaged flight data recorder and it has been sent to Washington for analysis, NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg said at the news conference. “We expect to get a very full report on that shortly,” he said. Investigators said they are hoping to interview the crew on Sunday. The cockpit voice recorder is in the tail of the plane and submerged underwater. Investigators will not be able to recover it until the aircraft is lifted out of the water, Landsberg said.<br/>

An elderly passenger has been arrested and detained in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong for endangering the safety of an aircraft, after he tried opened an emergency exit as the plane sat on the tarmac. In an apparent attempt to beat the queue to disembark, the passenger, identified by his surname Song, opened an emergency door near his seat after his flight from the northern city of Jinan in Shandong province to Putuo near Shanghai landed. The 65-year-old Song said that it was his first time to fly and he wasn't aware of the safety protocols, despite clear warnings posted around the emergency exit. His attempt at a novel disembarkation ended when he saw that there were no stairs leading down from the breached exit. He was surrounded by cabin crew and airport security and led away, and the cabin crew were able to re-secure the door without further incident. He was detained on April 21 for ten days under Article 34 of the Public Security Administration Punishment Law, which focuses on airline safety.<br/>

Dubai International Airport’s Q1 passenger traffic fell 2.2% to 22.2m compared to the same period a year earlier, which operator Dubai Airports partly blamed on the worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX. The drop in quarterly passenger figures was largely due to a 3 percent reduction in flights, some caused by the 737 MAX grounding, and the timing of the Easter break this year, Dubai Airports said on Sunday. Flydubai, which is based at the airport, has grounded all of its 14 MAX’s, forcing it to cancel dozens of flights. Other airlines that use the airport have grounded the plane. The airport’s main airline, Emirates, does not operate the MAX. The average number of monthly passengers was 7.41m compared to 7.42m a year earlier. Dubai airport, which usually posts monthly traffic figures, has seen growth slow over the past year.<br/>

Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport opened its first dedicated LCC terminal May 1 as it prepares to handle a growing demand for low-cost travel in Southeast Asia. To create the terminal, designated 2F, the terminal wing was stripped down and amenities such as air-conditioning, duty-free shops and airbridges were removed to reduce operating costs. State-owned PT Angkasa Pura II operates the airport serving the Indonesian capital. The renovation is part of a Terminal 2 upgrade planned to increase capacity from 9m to 22m passengers annually by 2022. Six carriers—Cebu Pacific, Indonesia AirAsia, Lion Air, Malindo Air, Sriwijaya Air and Thai Lion Air— have moved from Terminal 2D to 2F. Jetstar Asia and Scoot will move to the LCC terminal at a later date.<br/>