Federal investigators say some safety inspectors who helped set pilot-training standards for the Boeing 737 Max were unqualified and the FAA seemed to mislead Congress about their competency. The FAA disputed part of the investigators' conclusions Tuesday. The agency said all the inspectors who evaluated the Max were fully qualified for the work they did, and it stood by its statements to Congress. The standoff between investigators and the FAA stems from a whistleblower complaint that was investigated by the US Office of Special Counsel. The special counsel's disclosures are another setback for the FAA, which is already under scrutiny for its certification of the 737 Max. According to published reports, senior FAA officials did not understand a key flight-control system that was later implicated in 2 crashes. <br/>
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In a series of meetings around the globe over the next few weeks, Boeing will try to convince a key audience that its 737 Max is safe: Pilots who will fly the jetliners. The sessions started Tuesday in Miami and will conclude in mid-October in Singapore. Pilots are also gathering in Shanghai, Istanbul and at Gatwick outside of London for demonstrations of its revamped software for the Max and new training materials, a Boeing spokesman said. The outreach is just one piece of a large and complicated campaign to help prepare for the eventual return to service for the jetliner. Boeing must win the support of sometimes fractious global regulators for its redesigned jet, while also preparing to clear a logjam of hundreds of newly built jets that can’t be delivered because of the flying ban. <br/>
Aviation regulators around the world should come to an agreement on when the Boeing 737 Max can return to service, or risk hurting public trust with a piecemeal approach, the head of IATA warned Tuesday. “It will not improve the trust of the general public in the system” if countries have their own plans for the planes’ return, DG Alexandre de Juniac said. The FAA’s new chief Steve Dickson Monday briefed his international counterparts on the certification process of the 737 Max ahead of a UN aviation meeting in Montreal this week. He called for improvements to aircraft design and production standards. The agency said it would be up to individual countries to decide when the planes can fly again and Boeing’s CE earlier this month said that the planes could return to service in phases. <br/>
Flying will have to become more expensive, especially for frequent flyers, to avoid climate chaos and keep the UK within its carbon targets, the govt has been warned, while going ahead with a new runway at Heathrow would all but rule out airport expansion in the rest of the country. Ministers are likely to have to choose among options including hikes to air passenger duty, new levies on frequent flyers and changes to air taxation relative to rail and road in order to limit burgeoning demand for cheap flights in the next few years. Aviation is likely to become the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK by 2050, warned the Committee on Climate Change, the govt’s statutory adviser, even though technological advances will reduce aircraft emissions. <br/>
The Commercial Aircraft Corp of China forecasts a Chinese market for 6,119 aircraft of approximately 120 to 200 seats over the coming 20 years. For the seating subcategory centered on 160 seats, which COMAC is addressing with its C919 airliner, the demand forecast is 4,625 aircraft for the period 2019–38. According to the company’s annual market outlook, China will require 2,128 twin-aisle aircraft. COMAC divides this category into subcategories centered on 250, 350 and 400 seats— among which it expects the first to dominate, with demand for 1,466 aircraft. COMAC and United Aircraft Corp are developing the CR929 twin-aisle aircraft, which seats 280 in a 3-class arrangement. COMAC also builds the ARJ21 regional jet, which seats around 90 passengers in an all-economy configuration. <br/>