As Boeing sets its sights on winning approval to fly its 737 MAX within weeks, following a 6-month safety ban, engineers around the world are rolling out plans for one of the biggest logistical operations in civil aviation history. Inside Boeing's 737 factory at Renton, Washington, workers have pre-assembled dedicated tool kits for technicians tasked with installing software updates and readying over 500 jets that have sat idle for months, insiders said. Across the globe, Boeing teams are hammering out delivery schedules - and financial terms - with airline customers who have been forced to cancel flights, cut routes and fly aging jetliners while they await the MAX's return. One source likened the logistics to a nation "going to war." <br/>
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Congress Thursday asked Boeing's CE to make several employees available for interviews as part of a congressional probe into the design, development and certification of 737 MAX aircraft involved in two crashes. House of Representatives Transportation Committee chairman Peter DeFazio and representative Rick Larsen, who chairs the aviation subcommittee, said that while Boeing has provided substantial documents and shared senior management’s perspective, "it’s important to the committee’s investigation to hear from relevant Boeing employees." The committee plans another Boeing hearing in the coming weeks and previously asked whistleblowers to come forward with any information about the plane's development. <br/>
For the past 5 months, a small committee of Boeing’s board has been interviewing company employees, safety experts and executives at other industrial organisations in an attempt to understand how the aerospace giant could design and build safer airplanes. The committee is expected to deliver its findings to the full Boeing board this week, and call for several meaningful changes to the way the company is structured, according to 3 people briefed on the matter. The recommendations will include that Boeing change aspects of its organisational structure, calling for the creation of new groups focused on safety and encouraging the company to consider making changes to the cockpits of future airplanes to accommodate a new generation of pilots, some of whom may have less training. <br/>
London Heathrow remained fully operational Sept 13 despite attempts by climate change activists to disrupt flights by flying small UAVs within the airport’s exclusion zone. Twelve people have been arrested “on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance,” London police said. There has been no breach of airport security and all 12 were being held in custody, the police said. The protest group, Heathrow Pause, threatened to shut down the airport for days by flying small drones at no higher than head height within the 5 km exclusion zone, where UAV flights are illegal, then turn themselves in to the police. The group said the drones would not pose a threat to aircraft, but Heathrow’s policies would require it to halt flights if UAVs were known to be active in the area. <br/>
The Philippines’ largest flight school is trying to bring more women into the cockpit to help meet a shortage of pilots in Asia. At Alpha Aviation Group’s campus in Pampanga province north of the capital, 1 in 5 of its 550 students each year are women, whereas only about 3% of the world’s pilots are female, founder Bhanu Choudhrie said. Choudhrie said the group holds recruitment programs at universities and invites female pilots to give career talks to students to encourage more women to apply. These initiatives aim to dispel the notion in the Philippines that only men can apply to flight school, he added. Boeing estimates Asia will require 266,000 more pilots by 2038, a third of the global shortage, as travel booms faster in the region than anywhere else. <br/>
The head of the United Arab Emirates' General Civil Aviation Authority said Sunday he was not optimistic that the Boeing 737 MAX would return to operations this year and that Q1 of 2020 was more likely. Boeing is targeting regulatory approval for the fixes in October, though the US FAA has said it does not have a firm time for the aircraft to be flying again. The GCAA will conduct its own assessment to allow the MAX to return to UAE airspace, rather than follow the FAA, DG Said Mohammed al-Suwaidi said. He said the GCAA would look at the FAA decision and that the UAE regulator had so far not seen details of Boeing's fixes. UAE airline Flydubai is one of the largest MAX customers, having ordered 250 of the narrow-body jets. It has not said when it expects the aircraft to be operational again. <br/>