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The head of the US FAA met with airline CEOs on Wednesday and asked carriers to share more information to boost safety and identify potential problems. FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker convened a meeting with airline CEOs, the agency said, to "ensure the aviation industry continues expanding safety management systems and finding ways to share information transparently to minimize risk and advance safety." The meeting came after the FAA last month grounded 171 Boeing MAX 9 airplanes after a mid-air cabin panel blowout on a new Alaska Airlines plane. The NTSB said Tuesday preliminary evidence suggests the plane was missing four key bolts when it left the Boeing factory. Whitaker told lawmakers Tuesday he is boosting oversight of Boeing. American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, UPS and FedEx took part in the meeting. Air carriers share information like maintenance issues through the Commercial Aviation Safety Team (CAST), a government-aviation industry partnership founded in 1997. In January 2023, the FAA proposed requiring charter, commuter, air tour operators, and aircraft manufacturers to implement a key safety tool aimed at reducing accidents. The agency wants to extend a mandate to adopt so-called Safety Management Systems (SMS), which are policies and procedures to proactively identify and address potential operational hazards early on. American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said in a statement the airline fully supports expanding FAA oversight "throughout safety management systems across the industry." United CEO Scott Kirby said in a statement the airline agreed "the highest levels of safety are best achieved through partnerships at all levels."<br/>

Shares of Athens International Airport SA jumped 15% at the start of trading on the Athens Stock Exchange, in the country’s biggest initial public offering in more than two decades. The stock opened at €9.40 a share, compared with the IPO price of €8.20, the high end of the initial range, and later pared gains slightly to trade up 12% at 4:20 p.m. in Athens. The move came as the benchmark ASE Index slipped 0.9% after touching its highest intraday level since May 2011. “Greece becoming investment grade last year was a big push; investors are keen to deploy more into the region,” Marco Guarino, executive director at Morgan Stanley’s equity syndicate desk for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said in an interview. “We will see more activity coming from Greece this year, particularly from privatizations.” The bank was joint global coordinator on the offering along with BofA Securities. The Greek state raised E785m last week through the sale of its 30% stake in the 23-year-old airport, known as Eleftherios Venizelos. Investor demand exceeded the amount on offer within hours of books opening. The IPO is just one of the latest signs that Greece’s economy, which outperformed most of its European peers last year, has made a comeback in the market more than 10 years after its financial crisis. <br/>

Swiss Re is among a growing list of reinsurers to drop its demand that a near $10b battle with aircraft leasing companies, seeking payouts for more than 200 jets stuck in Russia, should be heard in Moscow, court filings show. Swiss Re's decision to accept the jurisdiction of English courts follows a similar decision by peer Chubb late last year as a battle against lessors, including Ireland's AerCap, US-listed Carlyle Aviation Partners and New York and Dublin-based Merx Aviation, heats up. Swiss Re and Chubb declined to comment. The two heavyweights are among around 35 defendants that will now allow the case to be heard in England, court documents showed, as the first day of a London High Court jurisdiction hearing kicked off on Wednesday. More than 400 aircraft have been stuck in Russia since Western nations slapped sanctions on the country following its invasion of Ukraine two years ago, prompting a wave of lawsuits that include two complex group claims in London. Wednesday's case turns on "operator" policies, under which Russian airlines leased the jets through international lessors, insured them through Russian insurers, and reinsured those policies through the London market. Lessors are named as insured and can therefore also claim directly in some instances. Reinsurers fighting the claim say their policies stipulate this case should be heard in Moscow. But lessors argue there are strong reasons not to enforce jurisdiction clauses that would put them at risk of unfair hearings and inconsistent judgments.<br/>

A top Boeing executive on Wednesday urged suppliers to maintain the pace of the current 737 production schedule, but acknowledged that an ongoing FAA audit of the company's 737 MAX production line could force changes to the schedule. Boeing reaffirmed its 737 master schedule in a Jan. 22 email to its suppliers following the Jan. 5 mid-air cabin panel blowout on a MAX 9, Reuters previously reported. The supplier master schedule, which lays out the expectation for when suppliers should be at a given production rate, calls for a production rate for the 737s of 42 per month, starting this month. However, the FAA capped Boeing's 737 production line at its current rate of 38 aircraft per month while the regulator investigates Boeing's manufacturing practices -- a situation which could leave Boeing lagging behind its supply chain, depending on how long the limit on production lasts. "I would ask all of you to bear with us," Boeing supply chain head Ihssane Mounir said at an aerospace supplier conference outside Seattle, adding that the planemaker understands suppliers have had to hire workers and make investments ahead of the planned ramp-up. "We will work with you on an individual basis in terms of what you need to do, whether that is building inventory, whether that is your business requirements," he said. Boeing has been embroiled in a full-blown safety and reputational crisis following the Jan. 5 accident involving a recently delivered Alaska Airlines MAX 9. Mounir, in his first public remarks since the accident, struck a tone of unity, imploring suppliers to be transparent about problems that could lead to a breakdown in quality. "Please raise your hands, talk to us," he said. "If there are business requirements we need to address to help your stability and help the quality, we'll sit down and we'll go through those discussions."<br/>

In the wake of the latest Boeing 737 Max fiasco – a weekslong grounding following the explosive decompression of an Alaska Airlines flight in January – a lot of passengers are inverting that old mantra “if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going.” Duc Vu, 41, was already wary of flying on the 737 Max 8 after its second crash in 2019, but the most recent incident confirmed his feelings about the aircraft family. Boeing has pledged to be transparent and strengthen safety. “But for me, it’s too little, too late,” the Philadelphia management consultant said. Vu has tried to avoid the 737 Max line when he flies, even switching his go-to carrier from Southwest Airlines to American due to the higher number in the former’s fleet (though neither fly the Max 9 variant involved in the January incident). “In light of everything that happened with the Alaska flight, I felt very validated in my decision-making,” he said. Vu is hardly alone. Social media is littered with posts from travelers who say they want to avoid Boeing 737 Max jets in their future travels. Travel booking company Kayak even included filters on its flight search page that allow passengers to exclude itineraries with certain aircraft types. But for most travelers, it may be tough to decode what kind of plane is operating their flight because, ultimately, airlines – not passengers – are Boeing’s customers. Travelers may not have much say over what kind of plane they’re boarding once they’ve decided to fly somewhere. Most experts suggest there’s no reason to worry, though. Many point to the excellent overall safety record of aviation in the U.S., and airlines that fly the Max say they’re sticking with Boeing, even as regulators increase oversight of the company’s production lines. Story has more.<br/>

A production cap and recent incidents with Boeing's 737 MAX aircraft will "undoubtedly" impede the planemaker's ability to catch up on already delayed delivery commitments, lessor Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) Capital said on Wednesday. The FAA has ordered Boeing to cap 737 production at the current rate of 38 jets a month for an undefined period while it addresses quality lapses, deferring the increases needed to meet rising demand for new jets. Boeing has been under fire from regulators and airlines since the Jan. 5 blowout of a door plug on a 737 MAX 9. "To be candid we're not sure that Boeing can deliver on their current contractual commitments because I'm not sure that they control their destiny right now in the way that they would like to," DAE CEO Firoz Tarapore said on an analyst call, adding the aircraft lessor had already been impacted by delays. "Now, despite this noise, we are confident that Boeing will right the ship in a way that provides the assurance to both our airline customers and us, the leasing customers, that we are indeed buying a quality product from a quality organisation." A spokesperson for Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. DAE, one of the world's top 10 lessors with a 500-strong fleet of owned, managed or ordered aircraft, agreed to buy 64 Boeing 737 MAX jets last August that were scheduled for delivery between 2023 and 2026.<br/>

Europe's Airbus confirmed on Wednesday it had delivered 30 jets in January, up 50% from the same month last year, and reported 31 new orders.<br/>Airbus formally booked a recent order from Delta for 20 A350-1000 jets and firmed up a provisional Dubai Airshow order from Ethiopian Airlines for 11 A350-900 aircraft. Reuters reported the Jan. 30 deliveries on Monday.<br/>