Egypt instructed all of its airlines to avoid Iranian airspace for three hours in the early morning on Aug 8, amid tension between Israel and Iran. The NOTAM, a safety notice provided to pilots on Aug 7, said the instruction would be in effect from 1am to 4am GMT 9am to 12 noon, Singapore time). It provided no further details as to why the notice was issued. "All Egyptian carriers shall avoid overflying Tehran (Flight Information Region). No flight plan will be accepted overflying such territory," the notice said, referring to the three-hour period specified. Egypt's civil aviation ministry later confirmed on Aug 7 the notice was intended to reduce flight-safety risks in light of a notification it received from Iranian authorities. "Military exercises will be conducted over Iranian airspace on Aug 7 from 11.30 to 14.30 and from 4.30 to 7.30 on Aug 8 Tehran time," the statement said.<br/>
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Boeing officials told regulators on Tuesday that the aircraft maker would make changes to how it designed and produced the type of panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines jet shortly after takeoff in January. Boeing informed the regulators that it was redesigning its door plugs — the panels that replace emergency-exit doors in certain design configurations with fewer seats — to better detect any malfunctions. The design changes are expected to be “implemented within the year,” said Elizabeth Lund, a senior vice president for quality at Boeing, who testified on Tuesday at an investigative hearing held by the National Transportation Safety Board, an independent government investigative agency. The hearing on Tuesday revealed that Boeing employees removed a door plug from what would later be the Alaska Airlines jet to repair damaged rivets, but without any required internal authorization or paperwork detailing the removal of the panel — a critical structural element. The safety board’s investigation found earlier this year that the plane, a 737 Max 9, left the Boeing factory in Renton, Wash., missing bolts that should have held in place the door plug that blew off midair. The safety board’s chairwoman, Jennifer Homendy, suggested at the hearing that the work culture at Boeing prioritized meeting production schedules over safety standards, and led to an overtaxed work force and lapses in the production process. On Tuesday, Homendy read quotes from the board’s interviews with mechanics who have worked at the Boeing facility for years. The workers testified to board investigators that they were regularly pressured into working 10 to 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week, Homendy said. At Boeing’s Renton factory, the contractors from Spirit AeroSystems, a Boeing supplier that makes 737 Max fuselages, pointed to constant tension between Spirit workers and Boeing mechanics. “Basically, we’re the cockroaches of the factory,” one of the Spirit contractors told a board investigator in March.<br/>
Boeing’s quality management system came under close scrutiny at a hearing investigating the Jan. 5 accident on a 737 Max 9 aircraft, with one worker representative criticizing the processes as overly complex and difficult to follow. The company’s system “is very complicated,” said Lloyd Catlin, a business representative for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents thousands of Boeing employees. The procedures and instructions have “been through so many changes, especially over the last 10 years, that it’s very ambiguous and open to misinterpretation,” he said. The complaints were raised during the second day of an extensive hearing held by the US National Transportation Safety Board to get to the bottom of why a panel blew off a nearly-new Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft in January. Since the accident, Boeing has said it’s made strides to address quality lapses at its factories, including by simplifying instructions for workers. <br/>The hearing covers a range of topics, including the manufacturing of the 737 Max, the events leading up to the panel — known as a door plug — falling off mid-flight, Boeing’s safety and quality management systems, and the FAA’s oversight of the planemaker. Boeing’s factory processes have been under the microscope of regulators and safety inspectors since the accident. The FAA put out a scathing report earlier this year that faulted Boeing for unclear processes, in which workers aren’t aways aware of the demands of senior managers. <br/>
An FAA official said Wednesday that the agency has 16 pending enforcement cases against Boeing, half of which have been opened since a door plug blew off a 737 Max in midflight. The increase in cases was disclosed Wednesday during a National Transportation Safety Board hearing into the accident, which happened during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5. Brian Knaup, who helps manage the FAA’s oversight of Boeing, said one of the open cases involves the removal of parts that have already been installed on airplanes in production. That is apparently what caused the mistake that led to the Alaska Airlines accident: Bolts that were removed to open the door plug for maintenance workers were not replaced when the panel was closed and the plane left a Boeing factory near Seattle. Knaup’s comment came near the end of a two-day hearing that included discussion of Boeing’s poor tracking of parts-removal jobs. The company failed to document who opened the door plug, and the missing bolts were never found. Another FAA official overseeing Boeing, Bryan Kilgroe, said he is kept awake at night wondering “especially considering all that has happened since Jan. 5, is why is it so difficult to sustain a corrective action for the long term?”<br/>
Modern aircraft are producing longer-lasting contrails that warm the planet faster than those created by older aircraft, presenting a "double whammy" for the aviation industry's carbon reduction efforts, scientists at Imperial College London have said. Contrails, short for condensation trails, are thin clouds formed from the water vapor produced by aircraft exhausts at high altitudes. Their cirrus-like formations, though visually pleasing to some, trap heat in Earth's atmosphere and contribute to the greenhouse effect. Vehicles engineered for the higher altitudes of modern air travel mean each vapor trail lingers for longer. "It's common knowledge that flying is not good for the climate. However, most people do not appreciate that contrails and jet fuel carbon emissions cause a double whammy warming of the climate," lead author Edward Gryspeerdt said in a statement. He added, "This study throws a spanner in the works for the aviation industry." The study used machine learning to analyze satellite data on more than 64,000 contrails from a range of aircraft flying over the North Atlantic Ocean. It found that flights are inadvertently doing more harm by flying at higher altitudes to preserve fuel and produce less carbon per passenger. To reduce jet fuel consumption, modern aircraft are designed to fly at higher altitudes, where the air is thinner, with less aerodynamic drag.<br/>