Boeing said it might slow or halt production of its 737 MAX jetliner if regulators don’t approve its return to service by the end of this year. The warning came as the aerospace giant reported Wednesday its biggest quarterly loss to date, after taking an initial US$7b hit on the grounding and slowed production of the MAX. CE Dennis Muilenburg said that while Boeing plans to continue producing 42 of its 737 jets a month and boost that rate to 57 next year, any slippage in the timeline for the return of the MAX could oblige the company to lower output. Boeing has said it hopes to restart MAX deliveries in Q4, but some govt and industry officials don’t expect it to fly again until next year. Boeing executives said questions remain about the process by which regulators and airlines will work to get the MAX back into passenger service. <br/>
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US air crash investigators, who are assisting in probes of 2 fatal crashes of Boeing’s grounded 737 Max, plan to issue recommendations within 60 days on how the plane was designed and certified. The board will issue a recommendation package on “design certification issues,” NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said Wednesday at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing. Most of NTSB’s recommendations come in domestic accidents, but it has made sweeping requests in foreign investigations, including after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in the Indian Ocean in 2014. Details of what the safety board will call for in the package weren’t revealed. The NTSB, which has no regulatory authority, relies instead on making recommendations to other agencies and companies during an investigation. <br/>
Boeing confirmed Wednesday it has moved the target for first flight of the 777X to early next year from the second half of 2019 following consultations with engine maker General Electric, whose new GE9X continues to suffer delays while the engine company redesigns a stator in the front part of the compressor that had shown more wear than anticipated during testing. Wednesday, Boeing CE Dennis Muilenburg said schedules still call for first delivery by the end of 2020, while hedging somewhat on the certainty of the timeline. “We know there is clear pressure on that [schedule],” he conceded. The company believes it can hold 777 delivery rates at 3.5 per month despite the schedule slip by maintaining rates of the 777-300ER and 777 Freighter. <br/>
Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Tuesday, joined 500 airline food workers picketing at Reagan National in Washington for higher wages and health insurance. “United, American and Delta over the last 5 years have raked in over US$50b in profit,” Warren said. “And yet, their workers, their food service workers, the people on the front lines are locked in poverty.” The two senators have positioned themselves as allies of unions and are vying for the influential endorsements of labour organisations. Both campaigns’ workers have unionised, though Sanders recently settled a dispute with a union representing his staffers, who said they were paid less than $15 an hour. <br/>
Stephen Dickson has been approved as the new head of the US aviation regulator, after Republicans rallied behind him following accusations about his conduct while working for Delta Air Lines. Senate Republicans voted to appoint Dickson as head of the FAA Wednesday, despite the controversy surrounding his treatment of a whistle-blower in his previous job. The whistle-blower, a Delta pilot, said Dickson ordered her to undergo psychiatric testing after she blew the whistle on safety lapses at the company. The airline denies this was in retaliation for her warnings about safety, while Dickson could not be reached for comment. Republican and Democratic senators were initially alarmed by the accusation, and angered by the fact Dickson did not disclose it before his confirmation hearings. <br/>
Disney has denied reports it is planning to launch its own airline in the US, with a spokesperson saying "there is no truth at all" in the rumours. Specialist news site JustDisney.com this month published a now-deleted report speculating that branded planes would ferry guests in and out of Orlando, Florida, home of its Walt Disney Land World, the most visited holiday resort on the planet, to airports including Detroit, Chicago, New York LaGuardia, and Los Angeles International. It also said that the Disney Company was poised to start acquiring small, regional carriers in 2021. The conglomerate does already have a similar air travel proposition. China Eastern Airlines and the Shanghai Disney Resort last year partnered to launch several themed aircraft to fly passengers between the resort and Beijing Airport. <br/>
Managing its environmental footprint is the air transport industry’s “number one challenge” in a world where people’s mind-sets and expectations are changing fast, the head of Europe’s transport ministry said. EC DG for mobility and transport Henrik Hololei said aviation emissions “had to come down” if the industry is to maintain its license to grow. “In Europe, we observe that people’s mind-set about that is changing very fast and, without the slightest doubt, public demand and societal expectations for cleaner and much more sustainable air transport will grow rapidly in the coming years,” he said. He noted that the term “flight shame,” started with a movement begun in Sweden, is spreading and pressures people to not fly. France has decided to introduce an environmental tax on all flights in response to the movement. <br/>
Air traffic to and from Amsterdam Schiphol airport was seriously disrupted Wednesday because of an outage at the airport's main fuel supplier that kept dozens of flights on the ground. A fault in the systems of Aircraft Fuel Supply, a third-party company that controls the supply of fuel to aircraft, meant at least 70 planes could not be provided with the fuel they needed to depart. "Almost 180 flights have been canceled by airlines," the airport said early Wednesday evening, adding that the amount of incoming flights had been reduced to one third of normal capacity. Air France-KLM said it expected problems to persist Thursday, possibly leading to more cancellations then. The only planes able to take off were those that still had enough fuel in their tanks upon arrival in Amsterdam, a Schiphol spokeswoman said. <br/>
After years of consecutive double-digit growth, Vietnam’s aviation sector is seeing a slowdown in passenger traffic for the first half of 2019, compared to the year-ago period. In a report card released by the CAAV, 72 airlines carried 20.2m international passengers, up 12.5% year-on-year. However, despite the double-digit growth, it was slower compared to 26% in 1H 2018. The trend was the same for the domestic market, where Vietnam’s 5 carriers fly 33 routes across 22 airports. For 1H 2019, a total of 18.3m passengers were carried, up 6.2% YOY, but down 2.7% when compared to the 9% growth for the year earlier. While the CAAV has not cited a direct underlying source for the decline, local international airports could be coming to terms with its massive influx of traffic and could be near capacity. <br/>