With airplane manufacturer Boeing under intense scrutiny for the better part of a decade, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been working to implement safety reforms at the company. But not everybody is satisfied with how the agency is handling things. The FAA has taken major regulatory actions against Boeing following a slew of safety mishaps, including a recently proposed $3.1 million fine, but also announced it will be letting the company have more control in the near future. While some have lauded the FAA’s oversight of Boeing, others are calling the agency’s actions a mere slap on the wrist.

‘Stamp of approval’

The FAA has been “scaling back obstacles for Boeing to deliver some of its newly produced aircraft to customers, a hopeful sign for the plane maker’s recovery,” said The Wall Street Journal. This includes allowing Boeing to “perform final safety checks on its 737 Max jets,” which the FAA had previously prohibited the company from doing itself following a string of accidents.

Boeing will be allowed to do the same with its 787 Dreamliner jets, and these airworthiness certifications “serve as a stamp of approval affirming that each new plane is designed to approved specifications and is safe to fly,” said The New York Times.

Boeing is clearly “winning more confidence from its regulator after years of safety and manufacturing crises,” said CNBC. The FAA’s decision to ease Boeing’s “regulatory burden is a sign that government officials are satisfied with the company’s progress on improving its manufacturing process,” said the Journal.

‘Too much leeway’

Not everyone is convinced that the FAA’s oversight of Boeing is strict enough. Boeing “got into trouble in the first place because it was given too much leeway on certifying its own work and ended up deceiving authorities,” said Bloomberg. The FAA has said allowing Boeing to certify its own planes is necessary to free up federal regulators, but with a Trump administration “focused on shrinking the federal workforce and cutting regulation, there’s a danger this may again go too far.”

Critics have also suggested the FAA’s penalties to Boeing are not aggressive enough given the company’s wealth. The agency’s proposed $3.1 million fine is “little more than a rounding error for Boeing,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in a letter to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford. For Boeing, a fine of this amount is “easily absorbed as the cost of doing business, not a meaningful deterrent to dangerous behavior.” Unless fines “rise to the level that forces the company to invest in real safety reforms, the risks to the flying public will persist.”

Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate’s committee investigating Boeing’s safety issues, is looking for the agency to “explain how it calculated the penalty,” said Reuters. Fines or not, if Boeing’s “production ramp-up goes smoothly, the company will soon be rolling in cash,” said Bloomberg, but if “there’s a snag or another mishap, it would be a serious setback.” The FAA “needs to take off the leash at some point, but perhaps it still needs to be held tight during this initial effort to boost production.”

While air travel remains the safest mode of transportation by a significant margin, there might be something happening on airplanes that could cause you a literal headache. Toxic fumes from jet airliners can sometimes leak into the cabin and cause significant health problems for passengers, according to a new investigation from The Wall Street Journal. The fumes have reportedly been found in the cabin of almost every modern airplane model, and there are indications that both the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and airplane manufacturers have long known about the problem.

How do toxic fumes get on airplanes?

There have been thousands of “fume events reported to the Federal Aviation Administration since 2010, in which toxic fumes from a jet’s engines leak unfiltered into the cockpit or cabin,” said the Journal’s investigation. This is due to a design element on planes called “bleed air.” While half of the oxygen on planes is recirculated into the cabin through filters, the other half is “pulled from outside via the aircraft’s engines,” which can bring unwanted oil fumes into the cabin if the seals keeping the oil out fail.

These fumes “have led to emergency landings, sickened passengers and affected pilots’ vision and reaction times midflight,” said the Journal. The majority of these fumes “consist of carbon monoxide and unspecified quantities of neurotoxins, aren’t toxic and have mild to no symptoms,” said The Hill. Continued exposure, however, such as what is experienced by pilots and flight attendants, could “lead to more severe side effects.”

The bleed air design has been “featured in almost every modern commercial jetliner except Boeing’s 787,” said the Journal. But the fume reports are “largely driven by Airbus A320s, which are used by the three largest U.S. airlines,” said NewsNation. A 2015 FAA report said the annual rate of fume incidents was about 33 per 1 million aircraft flights; the Journal reported this rate was significantly higher in 2024 at 108 incidents per 1 million flights.

What can these fumes cause?

While the fumes don’t often cause major problems, they sometimes lead to significant health consequences. Flight attendant Florence Chesson was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and “permanent damage to her peripheral nervous system” from fume exposure, said the Journal. The effects on her brain were “akin to a chemical concussion and ‘extraordinarily similar’ to those of a National Football League linebacker after a brutal hit,” Chesson’s doctor told the Journal.

“The most common problems I see are general nervous system problems,” Dr. Robert Harrison, an occupational medicine specialist at the University of California San Francisco, told CBS News. If a person breathes the tainted air into their lungs, it “circulates around, and then it gets into their brain and can affect the other parts of the nervous system.”

What have officials said?

The FAA maintains that fumes rarely leak into airplane cabins. In “rare instances, mechanical issues such as failures of an engine oil seal or recirculation fan bearings can cause fumes to enter the cabin,” the agency told CBS News in a statement. The FAA “investigates the causes and makes sure they're fixed before the aircraft returns to service.”

Flight manufacturers and airlines have provided similar remarks. Airbus’ aircraft are “designed and manufactured according to all relevant and applicable airworthiness requirements,” an Airbus spokesperson said to People. Airbus is “committed to continuously enhancing our products, working closely with operators and regulators to ensure the best possible cabin environment for passengers and crew.”

The deadly crash of Air India Flight 171 last week has centered renewed scrutiny on the airplane's manufacturer, Boeing, and this time it's the 787 Dreamliner in investigators' sights. The accident, which killed over 270 people, was the first fatal crash for the Dreamliner since the model began flying in 2011.

Experts had previously raised concerns about safety issues for the Dreamliner, and the crash comes just weeks after Boeing agreed to a multi-billion-dollar payout related to another one of its faulty aircraft, the 737 Max. Now, the Dreamliner's troubles may begin to overshadow the Max's issues.

More problems for Boeing

Worries about the Dreamliner are not entirely new, as the "planes have been the subject of heightened scrutiny after whistleblowers raised concerns about manufacturing and quality issues going back many years," said The New York Times. Despite these concerns, the plane had never been involved in a fatal crash in the 14 years it has been flying, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

The cause of the Air India crash remains unclear, and "multiple factors, including bird strikes, pilot error, manufacturing defects or inadequate maintenance, can play a role in aviation accidents," said the Times. Determining the cause of the accident could take "months or years." Boeing "stands ready to support the investigation led by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau," said Boeing President and CEO Kelly Ortberg in a statement.

But this is only the latest in a string of issues for Boeing, which has faced public ire over safety incidents in recent years. Just weeks before the Air India crash, Boeing "agreed to pay $1.1 billion in a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice to avoid prosecution over the two crashes that together killed 346 people" on 737 Max jets, said The Guardian.

Recent problems with the Dreamliner have also drawn attention. American Airlines decided to ground a "new premium-heavy Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner due to serious maintenance problems," the aviation news site Simple Flying reported two days before the Air India crash. Another Dreamliner that was "identical to the one that crashed in India made four emergency landings in less than a month earlier this year," said The Telegraph.

New questions

The Dreamliner debacle "comes at a critical moment for the hobbled American icon, which has been buffeted by a succession of crises in recent years, losing billions of dollars due to plane groundings and production delays," said The Wall Street Journal. The Air India crash will likely "raise fresh questions about Boeing just as it begins to emerge from the fallout of a high-profile incident early last year when a door plug on a recently delivered 737 Max fell off during a flight."

Boeing employees have "observed shortcuts taken by Boeing" during assembly of the Dreamliner, "resulting in drilling debris left in interfaces and deformation of composite material," one Boeing engineer told CBS News. The engineer also claimed to have witnessed issues with other models. While this was the first fatal crash involving the Dreamliner, the plane has been "involved in previous investigations."

The Air India crash was also critically timed for Boeing on the business side, as it occurred "days before the opening of the Paris Air Show, a major aviation expo where Boeing and European rival Airbus will showcase their aircraft and battle for jet orders from airline customers," said The Associated Press. Boeing has already been dealing with significant losses in recent years, having "posted a 2024 loss of $11.8 billion," said CBS, bringing its total losses to over $35 billion since 2019.

'Trump fired a tariff torpedo at China — and hit Boeing right between the eyes'

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times

The "latest skirmish between Trump and China has painted a target on this nation's most important manufacturing exporter: Boeing," says Michael Hiltzik. China "ordered the country's airlines not to place new orders for Boeing aircraft," and the "size of the blow China struck against Boeing is hard to measure." Boeing's "plight is just one aspect of a White House tariff policy that increasingly resembles, as Shakespeare might have put it, 'a tale told by an idiot.'"

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'How likely is it that bird flu will spread to humans on a mass scale?'

Robert A. Weinstein and Cory Franklin at the Chicago Tribune

Fears of a "bird flu pandemic have not materialized, and there is less cause for worry than there was in the winter," say Robert A. Weinstein and Cory Franklin. But the "most feared scenario is a major recombination genetic event — the flu virus drastically reshuffles its genes in its hosts." So "surveillance must occur where the virus might be present: in raw milk and food, wastewater, animal and bird die-offs, specimens from zoo animals with flu-like illnesses and veterinary settings."

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'The cultural heresy of "Sinners"'

Armond White at the National Review

The "Black blues/vampire hybrid 'Sinners' mimics a mixed-genre Tarantino bash," says Armond White. The film "exploits the blues without accounting for its compelling folkloric qualities that contributed to the exceptionalism of American popular culture." The "one-dimensional rehash of Black American history degrades the legacy of the Southern blues." The "juxtaposition of vampire/tribal debauches revives the irresolvable racism that lay at the heart of Americana." The film is "hip-hop juvenilia for the millennium, minimizing Black culture."

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'The most underrated culinary ingredient is nature's pairing to eggs. Too bad we're terrified of it.'

Christina Cauterucci at Slate

Eggs, the "biological opposite of sperm, are a staple of American cuisine," says Christina Cauterucci. We "depend on and delight in the consumption of one variety of animal gametes. Why don't we eat the other?" It "makes sense that mammal sperm is a no-go," but it is "eaten as a standard food item in a diverse array of cultures around the world." Once you "wipe the cobwebs of orgasmic association from your head, fish sperm tastes pretty darn good."

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President Donald Trump wants a new plane — and he wants it sooner rather than later. But building a new Air Force One has taken longer and is more expensive than expected, which is raising the president's ire.

Trump is "angry over delays" in completing a new version of Air Force One, said CNN. Boeing, which has been plagued by troubles in its commercial airliner business, received the 2018 contract to furnish the two planes, one for use and one for backup. The construction was originally expected to be completed in 2024; The White House is still waiting. "I'm not happy with the fact that it's taken so long," Trump said to reporters. He is considering alternatives.

Why does AF1 need to be replaced?

The current pair of 747s serving as Air Force One are "surprisingly old," Popular Mechanics said way back in 2015. The model 747-200Bs were originally introduced in 1971, and production on them ended in 1991. The first president to use the existing versions of Air Force One was George H.W. Bush, in 1990. "The big communications innovation at the time was a fax machine," said The New York Times. There have been upgrades since then, but it is time for a replacement.

What is taking so long?

Building a plane is complicated. Plus, assembling a plane that is designed as a flying command post for the most powerful person in the world during a nuclear war increases the level of difficulty. Boeing has "faced a slew of challenges" involving everything from the Covid-19 pandemic to the "supply chain to workforce," said Breaking Defense. Trump negotiated the $4 billion purchase of the two new planes on a "fixed-price" contract, said CNN, forcing Boeing to eat the costs of any costs above that price.

It is turning out to be a costly meal: Boeing is already $2.5 billion in the red on the project. The task is to build a plane that allows the president to lead the government "from anywhere around the world in any circumstance," said AeroDynamic Advisory's Richard Aboulafia.

How can Trump speed up the process?

Some security requirements for the new planes' construction are being "eased," said The New York Times. Many mechanics who work on "less sensitive parts of the planes" will no longer be required to get high-level security clearances. Elon Musk pushed for that shift, and Boeing officials say the planes will nonetheless be built in a secure environment. Kelly Ortberg, Boeing's CEO, said he welcomed Musk's input. "I'm all in on trying to get the president the airplanes," Ortberg said.

What's next?

Possibly more holdups. The new jets "will be delayed until 2029 or later," said Fox Business. That would come after the final year of Trump's term in office. There is speculation the hangups could threaten Boeing's other business contracts with the U.S. government. Certainly, The White House is angry. "It is ridiculous that the delivery of a new Air Force One airplane has been delayed for such a long time," said Steven Cheung, the president's communications director.

'The Supreme Court just showed us what contempt for expertise looks like'

M. Gessen at The New York Times

Supreme Court justices "probably shouldn't be trying to make a ruling based on medical evidence," says M. Gessen. The "ease with which legislators overrule doctors, and the relatively small amount of attention this overreach received" during the Supreme Court hearing of United States v. Skrmetti, are "symptoms of our times." A "rejection of genuine expertise is both a precondition and a function of autocracy," and there is a "growing intolerance of minorities and, in particular, people who dare to challenge tradition."

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'The real problem at the heart of the Boeing plea deal'

Hui Chen and Todd Haugh at The Washington Post

There is a "morass of misaligned incentives that have weakened the ability" of corporate monitors to "achieve their most critical goal — reducing corporate wrongdoing in the long term," say Hui Chen and Todd Haugh. The "system is so broken that there isn't even a clear standard for judging whether a monitorship has worked," and "there will be no way" to "objectively determine whether Boeing has become more ethical and able to better prevent misconduct."

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'The University of Michigan's shift on DEI is only a start'

National Review editors

The University of Michigan's DEI shun is an "indication that administrators are already hearing the footsteps of Donald Trump," say the National Review's editors. Universities have been "among the most vocal proponents of the divisive DEI ideology, evident in their passionate defenses of racially discriminatory admissions policies." Requiring a "DEI-themed statement for hiring, promotion, tenure, or admission is nothing short of compelled progressive speech," and the "University of Michigan has taken a small step in the right direction."

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'This year, Arab American political power came to the fore'

Rami G. Khouri at Al Jazeera

"One of the major political developments in the United States" is the "success of Arab American political organizing," says Rami G. Khouri. A "new generation of political activists has emerged that has earned representation in unprecedented numbers." It "also put Arab Americans on the electoral map for the first time by launching the Uncommitted movement." Democrats "underestimated the power of this new generation and the intensity of citizen anger, which cost it dearly in the election."

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What happened

Boeing's largest union approved the company's latest contract offer Monday night, ending a punishing seven-week strike. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) said 59% of the more than 26,000 of its voting members approved Boeing's fourth offer, which includes a 38% raise over four years plus a $12,000 signing bonus and other benefits.

Who said what

The new contract will raise machinists' average annual pay to $119,309, from $75,608, including benefits but not overtime, Boeing said. The company originally offered a 25% raise. Union members had also held out for a return of the pensions they gave up under pressure in 2014, but Boeing wouldn't budge.

"You stood strong, you stood tall and you won," local IAM president John Holden said in Seattle. "This is a victory." Union leadership had urged members to approve this latest offer, saying they had wrung out all the concessions the struggling company was likely to offer. The strike cost Boeing and its suppliers billions of dollars.

What next?

IAM leaders said workers will return to Pacific Northwest assembly plants as soon as Wednesday and no later than Nov. 12, though it was expected to take weeks for production to hit pre-strike levels. Boeing is "under pressure from jet-starved airlines to ramp up deliveries," The Wall Street Journal said, and under scrutiny from federal regulators to prove it has fixed quality control issues.

'Boeing strikers should accept latest lucrative offer'

Thomas Black at Bloomberg

Striking Boeing workers "should vote yes" on a labor agreement and "return with a mission to revitalize one of the great American manufacturers, which has been plagued by quality and safety problems," says Thomas Black. A "no vote on such a lucrative offer would indicate that union members are only seeking to damage Boeing." Americans "don't want to see the country's ability to manufacture commercial aircraft wiped out, ceding the market to Europe or even China."

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'The presidential election may be the Super Bowl, but the races people often overlook are the real game'

Lisa Deeley at The Philadelphia Inquirer

Presidential elections "draw the highest turnout and garner the most excitement of any electoral contest," but "tens of thousands of voters will only focus on the top of the ticket and many skip one or more important races down the ballot," says Lisa Deeley. The "sad irony is that the positions that are regularly skipped are often the most pertinent to your day-to-day life — and should be treated as such at the polls."

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'Love doesn't have to be unconditional'

Myisha Battle at Time

Many "have subscribed to the idea that romantic love is unconditional," but "sometimes love is conditional," says Myisha Battle. There are "real and valid reasons why love fades, changes shape, or disappears." Love is "complicated and can be challenged by the smallest of things like personality quirks to more impactful issues like political and spiritual beliefs." Recognizing that when "conditions in the relationship change, so, too, can the love we experience is one way we can love more authentically."

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'The truth about immigration? As Elon Musk shows, borders are always open for the rich'

Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian

When is "an illegal immigrant not an illegal immigrant? When they're a privileged white person, of course," says Arwa Mahdawi. In "that case the correct classification is 'enterprising expat' operating in a 'legal grey area.'" Elon Musk "has amplified numerous anti-immigrant conspiracy theories," but "almost certainly worked in the U.S. without correct authorization in 1995." One "thing is clear: immigration rules don't apply to everyone equally. Borders are always open for the rich."

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What happened

Boeing's largest union rejected the company's latest contract offer Wednesday and voted to continue a strike that began Sept. 13. Local leaders of the union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said 64% of its members voted against Boeing's latest offer, which included a 35% raise over four years, $7,000 ratification bonus and increased health and 401(k) contributions. The union was seeking a 40% raise.

Who said what

Boeing had hoped its "sweetened deal," up from an initial raise of 25%, "would be enough to end the walkout by 33,000 machinists" in the Seattle area who build most of the company's commercial jets, The Washington Post said. But the company "may have underestimated the mistrust and lingering resentment that remains among rank-and-file workers," especially over a 2014 contract in which the union signed away its defined pension after Boeing threatened to move airline production out of the area.

"After 10 years of sacrifices, we still have ground to make up, and we're hopeful to do so by resuming negotiations promptly," IAM leaders in Seattle said Wednesday evening. "There are consequences when a company mistreats its workers year after year." The strike "comes during an already challenging year for Boeing," which reported a $6.2 billion quarterly loss Wednesday, The Associated Press said. Analysts said the strike is costing the company about $1 billion a month.

What next?

Without a deal, "factories that build the 737, 767 and 777 jets remain idled, further sapping the company's revenue," The Wall Street Journal said. "We're going to get what we want this time," union member Donovan Evans, 30, told Reuters. "We have better legs to stand on this time than Boeing."

What happened

NASA plans to bring Boeing's troubled Starliner space capsule back to Earth on Sept. 6, undocking it from the International Space Station while leaving behind the two astronauts who flew up in the craft's inaugural crewed flight in June. Barring weather delays or other setbacks, the Starliner capsule will land in New Mexico on Saturday. Astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore will return on a SpaceX spacecraft in February.

Who said what

"It's been a journey to get here, and we're excited to have Starliner undock and return," Steve Stich, NASA's commercial crew program manager, said Wednesday. There was "some tension in the room," he acknowledged, when NASA decided it was prudent to bring the capsule home empty, despite Boeing's confidence in the craft's thrusters. Williams and Wilmore, who expected an eight-day trip to the ISS, are "ready to execute whatever mission we put in front of them," said Dana Weigel, NASA's program manager for the space station.

Starliner's crewless return is a "stinging loss for Boeing" and "even a successful landing will be something of a hollow victory," The Washington Post said. The June test flight was supposed to "lead to regular operational missions" to the ISS, alternating with SpaceX's spacecraft, but now the Starliner's future is unclear.

What next?

The SpaceX Crew Dragon slated to bring Williams and Wilmore home is scheduled to launch Sept. 24, with two seats empty for their return flight.

Is it "still safe to fly"? That's the alarming question asked by one newspaper as it reported that 2024 has already been "one of the worst for air travel that anyone can remember".

But just how dangerous is air travel and what has caused this year to be so bad?

'Horror comics'

This year "has been one of the worst for air accidents that anyone can remember", said The Sunday Times. It got off to a tragic start in January when Japan Airlines flight 516 collided with a De Havilland coastguard plane as it landed in Toyko, killing five people.

Within days, a panel blew out on Alaska Airlines flight 1282, "leaving a gaping hole in the cabin" and "terrified passengers breathing through oxygen masks". These two incidents saw "aviation safety thrown into the spotlight", said Euractiv. Months later, the front windscreen of an Austrian Airlines Airbus A320 flying from Mallorca to Vienna was shattered and most of the nose cone was torn off.

Turbulence has been a major issue in 2024, with serious injuries being caused and the first death on a large commercial airliner since 1997. In May, a Boeing 777 hit "some of the worst turbulence that Singapore Airlines pilots have experienced", said The Sunday Times. A passenger died of a heart attack and more than 40 suffered skull, brain, spinal or bone injuries.

Then, earlier this month, all 62 passengers and crew died when the Voepass ATR 72-500 turboprop they were travelling in crashed in Brazil after the plane "corkscrewed down 17,000ft in just one minute".

Meanwhile, airline bosses told the newspaper there has been an increase in "horror comics" – the internal air safety reports that pilots have to file if they encounter serious turbulence or other safety issues on a flight.

All of this is making passengers more anxious. In June, the analytics company Quantum Metric found that one in five travellers aged 18-54 now checks the aircraft type when buying an air ticket and one in four plans to take fewer flights this year due to safety concerns.

'Catastrophic combination'

So what's gone wrong? Aviation is "being assailed on two fronts" – a "nosedive" at Boeing and "increasing turbulence", said The Sunday Times.

"Poorly made aircraft" are an issue, and a series of Boeing 737 Max 8 crashes were caused by a "catastrophic combination of corner-cutting, poor risk assessment and a calculated failure to inform airlines, pilots and regulators about changes to flight control software on the new jet that went into service in 2017".

Tim Clark, president of Emirates, the world's largest international carrier, said it is a "fact of life" that there has been "an uptick in clear air turbulence in the last year or two". Clear air turbulence is the most dangerous kind because pilots cannot see or predict it. Writing for The Irish Times, Paula Gahan said that after a decade as a cabin crew member, she had "little doubt" that turbulence is "getting worse" – and scientists support this.

Paul Williams, professor of atmospheric science at Reading University, told The Sunday Times that climate change is to blame, because rising air temperatures are disrupting the speed and flow of jet streams. But Nick Careen, head of operations, safety and security at IATA, the aviation industry’s trade body, said: "We certainly can't put a finger on saying this is all environmentally driven" and "there needs to be more study".

A Harvard University study from 2017 found that the odds that a plane you are flying on will crash are one in 1.2 million and the odds of dying in a crash are one in 11 million. To put these figures in context, your chances of dying in a car accident are one in 5,000.

'Boeing's no-good, never-ending tailspin might take NASA with it'

Clive Irving at The New York Times

Boeing's "engineering woes extend beyond Starliner — they threaten NASA's bigger goals of going back to the moon through its Artemis program," says Clive Irving. A "loss in confidence helps put the entire Artemis program into a new state of uncertainty." Concern over Boeing now "reaches beyond the commercial aviation division," and the company needs to "recover not just the engineering skills but the ethical obligations of what 'moonshot' really means."

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'Kamala Harris is right to not make her race and gender a rallying cry'

Zeeshan Aleem at MSNBC

Kamala Harris' "class description renders her ordinary, and there is no attempt to pique interest over the historic implications of her candidacy as a woman of color," says Zeeshan Aleem. Her "reluctance to draw extra attention to her womanhood or her Black and South Asian ancestry has stood in stark contrast to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign." Harris' "choice to go a different path is wise — and she should stay the course."

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'Mark Zuckerberg's problem isn't free speech, it's lies'

Jason Fields at Newsweek

The truth is "hard to find anywhere, but particularly on social media," and Mark Zuckerberg "wants to make it harder," says Jason Fields. A social media publisher "has a duty to act responsibly and do what it can to prevent such misinformation from spreading, just like any editorial entity does." But "whichever party is in control of the levers of government, the government gets to ask — not tell. Facebook gets to say yes or no."

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'Massachusetts just set the standard for removing PFAS from firefighter gear. Other states need to follow suit.'

Edward Kelly at The Boston Globe

It is "clear that if we want cancer to stop killing firefighters, we must get carcinogens out of firefighting gear," says Edward Kelly. Massachusetts signed a law "protecting firefighters by banning the sale of bunker gear with PFAS by January 2027," and firefighters should be "urging all cities and states to follow their lead." Removing PFAS from "bunker gear saves the lives of firefighters and helps us better protect the public when they need us most."

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"We've all been there," said Richard Hollingham on BBC Future: stuck on a broken-down train or stranded in an airport after a cancelled flight, unsure when we'll get home. Spare a thought, then, for Nasa astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore. In June, the pair arrived on the International Space Station (ISS) with limited luggage for what was supposed to be a fleeting eight-day visit. But the spacecraft that took them there – Boeing's new Starliner – suffered helium leaks and thruster problems before docking, raising doubts about its safety for the return flight.

If Nasa can confidently establish that the issues are fixed, the two astronauts may yet be able to return in the craft. If not, the Starliner will fly back empty, and Williams and Wilmore will have to remain on the ISS until they can hitch a ride with other returning astronauts on a SpaceX spacecraft – in February 2025.

The pair aren't in any danger, according to Nasa, said Stephen Bleach in The Sunday Times, and their stock of food and clothes was topped up last week by a supply capsule. Indeed, I found myself almost envying their unexpected summer in space – all that peace and quiet, "the licensed, guilt-free idleness of it". But then I remembered that they'll be working round the clock with seven other astronauts in what amounts to a "flatshare from hell", drinking recycled sweat and urine. They'll be too busy to feel sorry for themselves, said Wiliam Hunter in the Daily Mail. With lengthy work shifts and two hours of compulsory exercise a day, ISS crew members are left with little free time to ruminate.

Discomfort, risk and uncertainty are part of the deal if you're an astronaut, said Micah Maidenberg in The Wall Street Journal. "This is just the life that we live," Wilmore said in an interview in March when asked about the risk of missions going wrong. Both he and Williams have done previous stints on the ISS: she made headlines in 2006 by running a marathon inside it on a treadmill.

Williams's husband, Michael, remarked last week that his wife would be anything but disappointed by the prospect of spending more time carrying out scientific experiments and repairs on the orbiting station 250 miles above Earth. "That's her happy place," he said.

What goes up doesn't always come down — at least, not right away. Boeing's Starliner mission to the International Space Station won't return to Earth until sometime in August, CNBC said, while engineers try to figure out why the craft's helium thruster system has been so troublesome. Just don't say the two-person crew that launched in June is "stranded in space." Yes, the capsule has spent nearly two months on what was originally intended to last a bit more than a week. But the astronauts will get home, one way or another. "NASA always has contingency options," said one official.

Boeing has had a "long, difficult road" getting the capsule into space, said The New York Times. Back in 2019, it appeared the company could beat Elon Musk's SpaceX to space. But an uncrewed launch that year went awry, upended by software errors that were caused by "multiple failures in Boeing's processes." The second launch, two years later, was also plagued by faulty thrusters. It took two more years after that to get astronauts to space: The delays reportedly cost Boeing $1.5 billion. Some observers say the trial-and-error is part of the game. "It's spaceflight, it's risky, it's dangerous," former astronaut Scott Kelly told The Washington Post. "Stuff can go wrong."

What did the commentators say?

"Starliner is clearly a problem-prone, clunky spacecraft," Mark R. Whittington said at The Hill. The question now is whether it's worth the time and money to overhaul the program, or if NASA should just stick to letting SpaceX ferry astronauts to the space station. It's not even clear if Boeing is capable of fixing the problems. Maybe it's time to look at other options like the Gaganyaan spacecraft from India or the Dream Chaser spaceplane currently in development. One thing that's clear: "Boeing has seen better days as an aerospace company capable of creating flight-ready hardware."

Starliner's latest problems are a "misadventure the company's space division could ill afford," Thomas Black said at Bloomberg. The company is already suffering from a "tarnished reputation" thanks to a series of problems with its 737 Max airliner. "This is a company that doesn't need any more black marks on its reputation." That's why Boeing should spin off the space division into a standalone, "nimble" company that can focus on NASA's needs. "The space unit is a distraction for Boeing's main mission: making safe and reliable commercial aircraft."

What next?

Boeing might be looking for an exit. Just 10% of its revenues come from the spaceflight business, Marketplace said. And the industry is increasingly crowded with competitors like BlueOrigin and SpaceX that weren't around when Boeing originally got into the business. "It's the most vulnerable to disruptions of all of their businesses," one analyst said of Boeing. Starliner's future might be one of the first agenda items for new CEO Robert "Kelly" Ortberg.

In the meantime, there are still two astronauts — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — to bring home. The pair this week tested the capsule's thrusters, ABC News said, and the plan remains to return to Earth in the same craft that took them to space. But they might have to return aboard a SpaceX capsule. For now, though, NASA isn't ready to announce a return date. "We'll come home," said NASA's Steve Stich, "when we're ready."

What happened

Astronauts Suni Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore said Wednesday they are enjoying their extended stay aboard the International Space Station after their return to Earth was indefinitely postponed due to thruster glitches and helium leaks on Boeing's Starliner spacecraft. The two astronauts had planned on an eight-day stay after arriving at the ISS on June 6, on the Starliner's maiden crewed voyage.

Who said what

"I have a real good feeling in my heart that the spacecraft will bring us home, no problem," Williams said to reporters from the ISS. In the meantime, "it's great to be up here. I'm not complaining that we're here for a couple extra weeks." Wilmore said despite the thruster issues, the Starliner has been "truly impressive."
Boeing and NASA said the astronauts could fly the Starliner home now in an emergency, but the in-orbit and on-the-ground testing will add more assurances and help with future flights.

What next?

Steve Stich, who oversees NASA's commercial crew program, said the earliest the Starliner could return to Earth is late July. There has been "no discussion" about sending a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft up to "rescue" Williams and Wilmore, he added.

What happened

U.S. prosecutors are giving Boeing a week to accept a plea deal tied to a pair of deadly 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people. Under its terms, Boeing would plead guilty to one fraud-conspiracy felony, hire an outside safety compliance monitor, and pay an additional $244 million fine, according to lawyers for families of crash victims briefed Sunday by the Justice Department.

Who said what

The plea offer supersedes a delayed prosecution agreement Boeing signed in early 2021, a "form of corporate probation" lasting three years, The Wall Street Journal said. Federal prosecutors said in May that Boeing had violated its requirements. "Many family members feel like it's a sweetheart deal, but it's a serious step up in accountability from the original" settlement, attorney Mark Lindquist told the Journal.

Victims' families wanted Boeing to pay $24.8 billion and its top executives to face prosecution, a court filing last week said.

What next?

If Boeing rejects the terms, "prosecutors said they will take the case to trial," The Washington Post said. If it pleads guilty, that "could complicate its ability to receive government contracts unless it gets a waiver."

The summer travel season is once again in full swing, but if you're looking to jet off to a sun-soaked beach, you may have some difficulty thanks to recent calamities at Boeing. The U.S. airplane manufacturer has been besieged with numerous problems over the past half-decade, and as a result some travel experts now say that summer 2024 will bring extra headaches for vacation-goers. 

This includes issues with the aviation supply chain as Boeing struggles to temper concerns over the safety of its airplanes, particularly the problematic Boeing 737 Max models. This is likely to drive up the cost of traveling, meaning that some people may have to put that summer jaunt on the back burner. How are the issues at Boeing leading to problems in the skies?  

What at Boeing is causing problems? 

Boeing's safety and supply chain problems over the past few years have left a trail of chaos. Most notable are the supply chain issues; after a series of high-profile incidents, including the door plug being blown off of an Alaska Airlines flight, Boeing saw "intense federal and public pressure to improve the quality of its planes" and as a result, the company's "production of 737 Max jets has slowed to a trickle," said Forbes. 

What does a "trickle" mean? This past March, Boeing delivered 24 planes to airline clients, according to Forbes, which was a 53% decrease year-over-year. During the first two weeks of April, the company delivered just three planes, according to statistics cited by Forbes from the aviation analytics firm Cirium. In all, U.S. airlines are on track to receive 301 passenger airplanes in 2024, Martha Neubauer, a senior associate at AeroDynamic Advisory, said to Forbes, which is 40% fewer planes than the number initially expected for this year. It should be noted, however, that this is not entirely on the shoulders of Boeing; the airline's main competitor, Airbus, has also had supply chain issues and "accounts for 38% of the missed deliveries this year to airlines," Neubauer said. 

But the vast majority of the supply issues indeed come from Boeing and the 737 Max, especially after "U.S. officials ordered a limit on the aircraft's manufacturing" following the Alaska Airlines incident, said Bloomberg. While this was "intended to focus Boeing on safety, the move has put a major dent in the production of new planes — with thousands already on back order."

How will this affect summer travelers? 

While planes may be halted, the demand for summer trips is still high, which means travelers will likely feel it in their wallets. Vacationers should "expect to pay more for plane tickets this summer, as airline capacity struggles to keep up with demand," said Business Insider. 

This is especially true because 2024 is slated to break records for the most air passengers ever, with the International Air Travel Association predicting 4.7 billion people taking a vacation this year. But the problems with Boeing are "really going to trickle down to the consumer," said Yahoo! Finance. Fewer planes available to fly, combined with building demand, could "translate to higher ticket prices, and you could be paying more for your next trip."

This means that airfares "should stay elevated through 2024, instead of tapering … as occurred last year after May," Robert Mann, the founder of airline consulting firm R.W. Mann & Company, said to CNN. Mann noted that fare-tracking data from earlier this year has shown a spike; fares "booked in February for travel this year were 5%-6% higher than the same month last year, far outpacing overall inflation," said CNN.  

While most of the issues will involve domestic flights, there are international concerns too. Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Irish carrier Ryanair, said the airline may see its ticket prices rise up to 10% due to Boeing delivery delays, per Barrons. Ryanair is "doing our budgets based on a fare increase of 5-10%, which to me feels reasonable," said O'Leary.

When will things get better? It's hard to say. There is "uncertainty over when aircrafts will be delivered to airlines around the world that had been planning on receiving these as part of their summer program," John Grant, a senior analyst from travel data company OAG, said to Brides. 

What happened

Boeing's Starliner spacecraft docked at the International Space Station on Thursday afternoon, depositing astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Sunita Williams for a brief stay, a day after the aerospace giant's first crewed space flight launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Hours earlier, rival space company SpaceX conducted the first successful full test flight of its Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket.

Who said what

NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX to build spacecraft to replace the retired shuttle fleets, and Space X's Dragon capsules have been flying astronauts to the ISS since 2020. "When Starliner is certified, the United States will have two unique human transportation systems for ISS," said Jim Free, NASA's associate administrator.

This was Starship's fourth test flight and Boeing's third attempt to launch Wilmore and Williams into space aboard Starliner. Neither flight was flawless. Starliner had four helium leaks and briefly lost the use of five maneuvering thrusters. "Despite loss of many tiles and a damaged flap," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on X, "Starship made it all the way to a soft landing in the ocean!"

What next?

Wilmore and Williams will return to Earth no earlier than June 14, Boeing said.

What happened

Boeing executives met Thursday with Federal Aviation Administration officials to present a comprehensive safety plan FAA officials had demanded following the Jan. 5 loss of a door plug on an airborne Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 airliner. 

Who said what

The FAA "reviewed Boeing's roadmap" and "underscored that they must follow through on corrective actions and effectively transform their safety culture," FAA administrator Mike Whitaker said. Boeing is "confident in the plan" and will "work under the FAA's oversight" to uphold its "responsibility to the flying public to continue delivering safe, high-quality airplanes," said Boeing airline division CEO Stephanie Pope. 

The plan presented Thursday is "not the first time Boeing has promised it will clean house following a disaster," and it's "unlikely to quell concerns from the planemaker's sharpest critics," Politico said. It includes "several components to improve employee training, clarify instructions for assembly line employees, prevent suppliers from shipping defective components" and strengthen audits, CNN said.

What next?

FAA officials and Boeing are expected to meet weekly to assess their progress.

What happened

Boeing's Starliner capsule is scheduled to make its first crewed flight from Florida's Cape Canaveral on Monday night, launched atop an Atlas V rocket. The test flight, following years of delay, will carry veteran NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry Wilmore to the International Space Station. NASA contracted with Boeing and Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2014 to develop spacecraft to shuttle astronauts to the ISS; SpaceX has completed nine crewed missions since 2020.

Who said what

SpaceX has delivered, but NASA wants two different ISS transport vehicles because "you're just one flight away from some anomaly that you didn't catch," said NASA program manager Steve Stich to The Wall Street Journal. "Spaceflight is risky" and "unforgiving of mistakes," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson added. "NASA is integrated with Boeing to make sure that this flight is as safe as possible."

What next?

Starliner should reach the ISS in 26 hours and return the astronauts to Earth eight days later, touching down on land in the U.S. Southwest. Assuming the test flight goes well, Boeing will complete at least six crewed missions for NASA, alternating with SpaceX.

Boeing's well-documented troubles in 2024 appear to be continuing, as the company recently replaced the head of its 737 Max program after a series of safety mishaps involving the aircraft. The downslide of Boeing has allowed an unlikely competitor to jostle for the top in the aviation business: the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China, the country's state-run aerospace manufacturer.

Commonly known as COMAC, the Chinese airplane builder has recently been in competition with the two Western powerhouses: the American-based Boeing and the European-based Airbus. However, with the problems at Boeing making international headlines, COMAC appears to see this as an opportunity to get ahead of its competitors. At the recent Singapore Air Show, COMAC was described by Reuters as having "upstaged industry leaders Airbus and Boeing" and saw a number of orders placed for new aircraft. 

While Boeing grapples with its safety concerns, supply chain issues have also hindered much of Airbus' recent progress, a fact which the Singapore Air Show seemed to demonstrate. How is COMAC looking to leapfrog its two, much larger competitors, and will it be successful? 

What is COMAC's plan?

The company is looking to "position itself as a viable option for single-aisle jets, as companies like Boeing and Airbus grapple with a backlog of orders," Fortune said. COMAC is offering two main products: the C919 passenger jet and a smaller, regional aircraft known as the ARJ21. 

Both products, for now, are relatively small in scale — there are only four C919s in service with China Eastern Airlines. However, this appears poised to change, as Tibet Airlines — also Chinese-based — has placed an order for 1,000 C919s and 10 ARJ21s, according to Fortune. Several other Asian airlines also placed orders with COMAC at the Singapore Air Show, and the company "has received over 1,000 orders for its C919," Fortune said. Both the C919 and ARJ21 made their first flights out of mainland China last December. 

However, despite a flurry of recent orders, Boeing and Airbus remain the dominant airline manufacturers in the world, for the time being. "Challenging the duopoly of Airbus and Boeing has seemed remote, if not impossible," the Financial Times said. And in what could be another wrench in COMAC's plans, construction of the C919 "still relies on some key components made in Europe and the U.S.," the Times said. This could make sourcing parts in mainland China difficult.  

How are Boeing and Airbus responding?

Both Western companies have pushed back against the assertion that COMAC could become the industry leader. Despite Boeing's recent safety concerns, the company's 737 Max is still "the safest airplane," Dave Schulte, Boeing's Asia-Pacific commercial marketing managing director, said to CNBC. However, Schulte also acknowledged that the 737 Max 9, which made global headlines after the door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight recently blew out, was also "by far the most scrutinized airplane in the world, in the history of aviation." But COMAC's C919 remains "an airplane that is included in our long-term forecast," Schulte said. 

The C919 is "not going to rock the boat in particular," Christian Scherer, the CEO of Airbus' commercial business, said to CNBC. The aircraft "looks a bit like an Airbus narrow body" and is "not very different" from current market offerings, Scherer said to CNBC. While Scherer said that China's competitive streak would likely increase, the aviation market is "large enough for competition, we welcome the competition," he said. 

What is COMAC's endgame? 

China will likely not become the world's aviation kingpin anytime soon. While COMAC is on the rise, "it still has a long way to go before it can compete with aircraft from market leaders Boeing and Airbus," The Associated Press said. Most of COMAC's upcoming orders come from Chinese airlines, and to "have a sustainable future, COMAC must demonstrate that they are able to go beyond Chinese shores," Mabel Kwan, the managing director at consultancy Alton Aviation, said to AP. 

And while the 1,000-plus orders for C919s are nothing to scoff at, COMAC's opportunity is "likely to be over the long term because aircraft orders are placed years in advance," Mayur Patel, OAG Aviation's Asian head, said to the South China Morning Post. Even as COMAC looks to seize on Boeing's problems, "the export market remains wary of the C919 [and ARJ21] at present," Rob Morris, the head of consultancy Cirium Asced, said to the Post, meaning COMAC will likely remain in the distance for years to come. 

It hasn't been a good start to the year for Boeing. The American airplane manufacturer was back in the news on Jan. 5 after the door plug on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 blew off in midair. The incident led to the grounding of the planes and it was soon discovered that there were loose bolts and mechanical issues on a number of them. 

The incident is the latest of several problematic turns for Boeing, seen as a gold standard of American engineering and innovation for decades. The Alaska debacle comes five years after a pair of 737 Max crashes led to the deaths of 346 people. Boeing at that time grounded its Max planes and pledged to fix the issues with the model. But in the days since the Alaska incident, Boeing has seen a slew of problematic headlines, many of which didn't even involve the Max variant; an All Nippon Airways Boeing flight was forced to turn back after a crack in the cockpit window, China Southern Airlines decided to delay delivery of its Max planes, and a pair of Boeing aircraft clipped each other at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport.

Boeing has once again pledged to rehash its safety and manufacturing procedures, and the FAA is tightening its oversight of the company. But the question remains: Where did Boeing go so wrong?

A cultural shift

Boeing's "reputation for safety and excellence was such that people used to say, 'If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going' — and actually mean it," James Surowiecki wrote for The Atlantic. But while Boeing historically had a culture focused on pristine engineering, a corporate merger in the 1990s "turned it from a company that was relentlessly focused on product to one more focused on profit," Surowiecki argued. 

In the past, "The people who dictated [the company's direction] were the engineers. In the post-merger Boeing, the people who did so were more likely to be accountants," Surowiecki added. As a result of this profit-driving, the company has been outsourcing large portions of its productions, even though building airplanes "requires ... a willingness to spend freely on reliability and safety, and a culture that tolerates the reporting of mistakes," he concluded.

Many critics of the company's culture "see Boeing's recent production errors as evidence the company hasn't improved in the most important measure: making planes safer," Douglas MacMillan and Michael Laris wrote for The Washington Post. "You're still building unsafe airplanes," Ed Pierson, a former manager at Boeing's 737 factory, told the Post. Pierson added that the main problem at his worksite was that "poor factory conditions posed threats to production quality."

It's the processes at fault, not manufacturing

Others say Boeing's manufacturing isn't the true party to blame for the company's problems. The Boeing 777, for example, has over three million individual parts, meaning "more than three million opportunities for something to go wrong during assembly alone," Ashley Nunes wrote for Canada's The Globe and Mail. This "makes me wonder whether the outrage directed at Boeing is entirely warranted," she added. Instead of blaming Boeing, "What we need is more transparency from these companies so the public can better understand how and why design decisions are made," Nunes opined. At that point, "We can decide whether those risks outweigh the reward."

In the case of the Alaska incident, the door plug wasn't built by Boeing, but by a third-party company, Spirit AeroSystems. The blowout "may have been due to alleged oversights that happened after Spirit had added the door plug, once Boeing retook ownership of the plane," Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst for aviation outlet Leeham News, told Wired. As a result, Fehrm was "leaning toward processes being at fault, not the plane's design."

At the end of the day, though, "Boeing is responsible for certifying that each completed plane conforms to the approved design and is safe to operate," Lauren Rosenblatt reported for The Seattle Times. It must also "inspect and test products and ensure that “post-delivery activities” are completed." So even if there was a flaw with the Spirit-made plug, "It's hardly reassuring to know that Boeing might have someone else to blame, because ultimately Boeing is responsible for the safety of the aircraft it delivers," Peter Coy opined for The New York Times. While Boeing continues to ensure its commitment to safety, "If it can't catch mistakes, who can?" Coy concluded. 

China's largest airline is holding off on deliveries of Boeing's 737 Max airplanes over safety concerns, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday. This development could throw a new wrench in the business dealings between China and the American airplane manufacturer. 

The state-owned China Southern Airlines was ready to receive a large shipment of 737 Max planes "as early as January," sources told the Journal. However, the airline is now postponing those deliveries to allow for additional safety inspections of the planes. China's government aviation regulator has also called for all of the nation's airlines to conduct "precautionary safety inspections" on their existing 737 Max planes, the Journal reported. 

The renewed delay comes as fresh scrutiny is being placed on Boeing after the door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight blew off in midair on Jan. 5, resulting in a nationwide grounding of 737 Max planes across the United States. The Alaska flight was being operated by a variant, the 737 Max 9, which isn't part of the fleet being delivered to China Southern and is not currently used by any Chinese airlines. 

An extended delay could have wide-ranging implications for both the Chinese and American aviation business. China froze all deliveries of Boeing airplanes and grounded its existing models in 2019 following a pair of deadly crashes involving the 737 Max. China began flying them again at the beginning of last year, but only received delivery of a new Boeing plane, a 787 Dreamliner, last month, Business Insider reported. 

The delay could prove costly for Boeing, which has said itself that "China will account for 20% of the world's airplane demand through 2042," adding that its commercial fleet will "generate demand for $675 billion in aviation services." As a result, resuming sales of the 737 Max is a key element of Boeing's business plan in China. 

United Airlines and Alaska Airlines found loose bolts and other hardware in their preliminary inspections of grounded 737 Max 9 airliners, the airlines said late Monday. The Federal Aviation Administration had ordered all 171 U.S.-based Max 9s taken out of service for inspection on Saturday, following Friday evening's emergency landing of Alaska Flight 1282 after an emergency door panel popped out from the fuselage shortly after takeoff from Portland International Airport, leaving an open hole in the side of the plane.

United and Alaska are the only U.S. airlines with Max 9s, one of the larger versions of Boeing's popular 737 aircraft family. (Alaska used 65 Max 9s, while United operated 79.) The FAA and Boeing on Monday sent the airlines detailed procedures for inspecting the grounded planes, though the airlines are awaiting FAA approval to begin the inspections.

In preliminary inspection work, however, United technicians "found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug — for example, bolts that needed additional tightening," the airline said. The loose bolts were discovered in at least five United Max 9s, in different parts of the door plug, The Air Current reported. Alaska later said its crew discovered "loose hardware" around some Max 9 plug areas.

Flight 1282 safely returned to Portland with no serious injuries reported, though the National Transportation Safety Board said if the door plug had broken from the Max 9 at cruising altitude of 36,000 feet, not 16,000 feet, it likely would have been a catastrophe.

Alaska had recently placed restrictions on the same brand-new Max 9, barring it from flying to Hawaii, after onboard instruments warned about cabin pressure problems, the NTSB said Monday. Inspectors will look at whether those warnings were related to the failure of the door plug, but they are expected to focus on the manufacturing processes at Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems. Spirit makes the body for the 737 Max, including installing the door plugs on models configured not to use the optional emergency exits, at its plant in Wichita, Kansas.

For decades, the Boeing 747 has been a paragon of aviation. It was the world's first jumbo jet, and helped usher in the modern era of air travel. But its reign as "Queen of the Skies" officially came to an end this week as Boeing rolled out its very last of the iconic aircraft.

The 747-8 freighter was delivered to cargo airline Atlas Air on Tuesday, more than 50 years after the model was first pulled out of the hangar, Reuters reported.

First manufactured in 1968, the 747 became instantly recognizable for its wide body and trademark hump that made up part of a second deck. Through the decades, it remained a notable symbol of luxury in the skies.

Its numbers are dwindling, though, thanks to dated technology and competition from companies like Airbus. Only 44 passenger versions of the 747 remain in use, CNN reported, citing aviation analytics firm Cirium. However, there are still over 300 freighter 747s in the skies.

Numerous governments also use the 747, including the U.S. presidential aircraft, Air Force One. But in the era of ever-changing transportation technologies, the 747 has seen its dominance eclipsed by "more efficient twinjet planes," per Reuters.

Workers at the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, told The Seattle Times of their memories working on the legendary plane. Darrell Marmion, a top engineer at Boeing who retired last November, said, "I'm retiring with my airplane. I'm actually glad at the timing, because I do care so much for the airplane."

"One of my earliest memories in life was about 5 years old and my dad taking me on a tour of the mock-up of the first 747," Marmion added. "You just look at the shape of it and you know what it is. It's timeless and classic."

NASA announced Wednesday that it will be investing $425 million in aerospace manufacturer Boeing to help with an emissions-cutting project at the behest of the White House.

In a press release, NASA said the project, known as the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator, would seek to "develop and flight-test a full-scale Transonic Truss-Braced Wing demonstrator aircraft," a single-aisle airplane that would be significantly greener than those currently available.

NASA noted that the TTBW, unlike other single-aisle planes, would "result in fuel consumption and emissions reductions of up to 30 percent relative to today's most efficient single-aisle aircraft." The TBBW will have longer, thinner wings with stabilizers that make it more aerodynamic and thus more fuel efficient.

The TTBW's first test flight is planned for 2028, and NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said he hoped to have this next generation of aircraft in service by the 2030s.

In a separate statement, Boeing said that it will contribute the remaining $725 million needed for the project through its own funding. Boeing chief engineer Greg Hyslop added, "The SFD program has the potential to make a major contribution toward a sustainable future."

Boeing Chief Executive Dave Calhoun, perhaps in a bit of foreshadowing, had said last November, "There'll be a moment in time where we'll pull a rabbit out of the hat and introduce some new airplanes sometime in the middle of next decade," per Reuters.

The SFD program is a way to try and achieve the U.S. Aviation Climate Action Plan. Created by the Biden administration, the plan's goal is to have the U.S. reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Firefighters searching the crash site of a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 that nosedived into a mountainside last week recovered the plane's second "black box" on Sunday, Reuters reports.

The crash, which occurred on Monday just as the flight from Kunming to Guangzhou was about to begin its descent, was China's deadliest air disaster in 28 years. According to The Associated Press, all 132 people on board, including 123 passengers and nine crew members, were killed.

Recovery crews found the first black box — the cockpit voice recorder — on Wednesday, per AP. The second black box — the flight data recorder — is expected to shed light on what caused the plane to enter its fatal nosedive.

"We extend our deepest condolences for the loss of those on board China Eastern Airlines Flight MU 5735. Our thoughts and prayers are with the passengers and crew, their families and all those affected by this accident," Boeing said in a statement Saturday. "In addition, a Boeing technical team is supporting the [National Transportation Safety Board] and the Civil Aviation Administration of China who will lead the investigation."

The NTSB is an American agency, but participates in investigations overseas if the incident involves "a civil aircraft of U.S. Registry, a U.S. operator, or an aircraft of U.S. design or U.S. manufacture" and if the country in which the incident took place is a signatory to the International Civil Aviation Organization Convention.

In October 2018, a Lion Air flight in Indonesia plummeted into the Java Sea, killing all 189 people on board. Five months later, an Ethiopian Airlines flight ploughed into the ground outside Addis Ababa, killing 157.

There were striking similarities between the two crashes, said Roger Lowenstein in The Wall Street Journal. In both cases, the plane’s nose suddenly started dipping, causing the pilot to lose control. And each involved Boeing’s new 737 Max, the company’s “upgrade to its venerable 737”.

In Flying Blind: The 737 Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing, the Bloomberg journalist Peter Robison explains how Boeing brought an unsafe plane to market. The story he tells – of a company once renowned for its engineering excellence becoming in thrall to cost-cutting and short-term profits – is at once riveting and “disturbing”.

The origins of the two crashes lay in Boeing’s “bitter battle” with Airbus for dominance of the short-haul market, said Michael Skapinker in the FT. For decades, the 737 had “kept the world aloft”, but by the 2010s the European manufacturer’s A320 was “seen by many airlines as superior”.

Since developing a complete replacement for the 737 would have cost an estimated $20bn, Boeing opted instead to retrofit its existing 737s with “bigger, more fuel-efficient engines” – a process that cost $2.5bn. But because the old plane’s wings were so low-slung, the engines had to be mounted in a forward position – which meant the plane had a tendency to tilt upwards in flight. To prevent this, Boeing installed a sensor-activated software system called MCAS, which would automatically “force the aircraft’s nose down”.

That might have been fine had pilots known how to respond when MCAS kicked in, said John Arlidge in The Sunday Times. But fearing that “expensive and disruptive” simulator training would put off airlines buying the 737 Max, Boeing persuaded regulators that “MCAS was not important enough to require new simulator training”. In the plane’s manual, the software was barely mentioned. The Lion Air pilots had no idea why the nose kept dipping.

Robison exposes the arrogance of Boeing’s top brass, who failed to act even when their employees raised doubts about the Max’s safety, said David Gelles in The New York Times. And he castigates the Federal Aviation Administration for effectively doing the manufacturer’s bidding. This is an “authoritative, gripping and finely detailed narrative that charts the decline of one of the great American companies”.

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Andrew Lownie’s book about Edward Windsor and Wallis Simpson makes a familiar subject “seem fresh again”, said Marcus Field in the London Evening Standard.

He does so by focusing exclusively on the couple’s post-abdication lives, beginning his story on the “chilly December night” in 1936 when the duke, newly stripped of his status, set sail for the continent from Portsmouth, said Ysenda Maxtone Graham in the Daily Mail.

What follows is a tale of extravagance and resentment, played out in grand locations: a Rothschild-owned castle in Austria, various French chateaux, the lavish palace in the Bahamas where the couple lived during the duke’s time as governor. Lownie does nothing to challenge the prevailing view of the Windsors as a thoroughly “nauseating couple”.

In fact, he goes further than most, suggesting that beyond simply admiring the Nazis, the duke was a willing participant in a Joachim von Ribbentrop-led plan to install him on the British throne once the War was over. “Darkly compelling” and full of “eye-popping details”, this is an “unrelentingly damning portrait”.

Yet it fails to overcome a central problem, said David Aaronovitch in The Times – which is that “after the winter of 1942-43, when the eventual total defeat of Germany became certain”, the Windsors simply weren’t very important. From this point on, the book descends largely into trivia, as Lownie details dinner parties the couple attended, mansions they refurbished, and the duchess’s lavish shopping sprees.

Towards the end, to spice things up, he relates “sexual tittle-tattle” – including the duchess’s supposed penchant for threesomes – but none of it seems especially reliable. Ultimately, it’s a “sad” and squalid story – a damning indictment of Britain’s “useless” hereditary ruling class.

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Sarah Moss’s 2009 debut novel, Cold Earth, imagined an out-of-control virus, said Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer. She returns to similar terrain with her latest novel – only this time with less need for invention.

Set in November 2020, The Fell centres on Kate, a forty-something single mum, who “finally snaps” during a two-week quarantine period, and goes for a solitary walk in the Peak District. It’s “destined to be an ill-fated expedition”: the night draws in, Kate doesn’t return – and her absence is noticed by her teenage son Matt. With its vivid sense of “accumulating dread”, this is an “intense time capsule of a tale”.

Moss moves “gracefully” between various perspectives, said Sarah Ditum in The Times: that of Alice, an elderly neighbour; and Rob, a member of the mountain rescue team. Elegantly written and concise, The Fell is a “close-to-perfect” novel.

Even though Moss has said it was written fast, the prose here feels “precision-tooled”, said Roger Cox in The Scotsman. Remarkably, in only 180 pages, she has captured “all of lockdown life”.

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Mark A. Forkner, the former chief test pilot for Boeing, was indicted Thursday on charges of allegedly lying to federal authorities who were evaluating the 737 Max airplane.

Forkner, 49, is accused of sharing with Federal Aviation Administration regulators false and incomplete information regarding the plane's automated flight-control system. This system, called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), played a role in two crashes in late 2018 and early 2019, which left 346 people dead. Following the accidents, the 737 Max was grounded so authorities could investigate why the planes went into sudden nosedives shortly after takeoff.

Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad E. Meachem said that "in an attempt to save Boeing money, Forkner allegedly withheld critical information from regulators. His callous choice to mislead the FAA hampered the agency's ability to protect the flying public and left pilots in the lurch, lacking information about 737 Max flight controls."

Federal prosecutors say that in 2016, Forkner learned critical information about the MCAS, but did not pass it along to the FAA to include in the pilot instruction manual. He has also been charged with two counts of fraud involving aircraft parts in interstate commerce and four counts of wire fraud. He is set to appear in federal court in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday.

British Airways has announced “with great sadness” that its remaining Boeing 747 jumbo jets will be retired with immediate effect, as the airline’s fleet is reshaped for the era of post-coronavirus travel.

“It is unlikely our magnificent ‘queen of the skies’ will ever operate commercial services for British Airways again due to the downturn in travel caused by the Covid-19 global pandemic,” the flagship carrier said.

The Boeing 747 entered service with BA’s forerunner, the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), in April 1971. The plane’s first commercial flight for the airline carried passengers from a primitive-looking London Heathrow to New York.

At the front of the plane, passengers in first class travelled in luxury - but without lie-flat beds and personal entertainment systems.

Economy cabins were a little less spacious, but still surprisingly airy by today’s standards.

Until the advent of the Airbus A380, in 2005, the Boeing 747 was unique among modern aircraft in having a second passenger deck - accessed via a spiral staircase on early models.

Passengers in the first few rows sat in front of the pilots, and could see straight ahead through the windows due to the curvature of the nose. This photo shows a BA 747 caught in a sand storm at Riyadh Airport in Saudi Arabia.

Seen here coming in to land at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport, which closed in 1998, the 747 has four engines, making it less efficient than the twin-engined jets which are replacing it.

To celebrate the airline’s centenary last year, British Airways revived the BOAC livery on one of its younger jumbos. BA took delivery of its final 747-400 in 1999.

Nearly a year after a Boeing 737 MAX airplane crashed into an open field shortly after takeoff in Ethiopia, House investigators released a report Friday blaming Boeing's engineering mistakes and "culture of concealment," as well as the Federal Aviation Administration's "grossly insufficient" oversight of the production of the aircraft for the tragedy. The report also applied to an earlier 737 MAX crash in Indonesia, which combined with the Ethiopian Airlines flight killed 346 people.

The report highlighted the fact that Boeing avoided putting pilots through necessary training protocols and removed key references about the plane's flight control system — which is believed to be the main cause of the crashes — from official manuals during the FAA certification process for the MAX model, even after the Indonesia crash. The aircraft has been grounded for months and saw its production halt in January.

Despite accusing Boeing of withholding information from the FAA, the report still chastised the agency for failing "to identify key safety problems," although some Republican lawmakers pushed back against criticism of the FAA's approval process, arguing the report was rushed and led to premature conclusions.

Meanwhile, a draft report from Ethiopian investigators reportedly blamed the plane's design for last year's fatal crash, though it did little to acknowledge the possible role of Ethiopian Airlines and its flight crew. That lies in contrast to Indonesia's report last October which cited errors by Lion Air's workers and crew while also faulting Boeing's software. Read more at Reuters and The Wall Street Journal.

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web:

Amazingly, Boeing's reputation has managed to hit a new low, said Natalie Kitroeff at The New York Times. The company released a catastrophically damning trove of documents to congressional investigators last week that included "conversations among Boeing pilots and other employees about software issues and other problems with flight simulators" for the 737 Max, the plane involved in two fatal crashes. Employees distrusted the plane and the training pilots would get to fly it. "Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft?" asked one in an email exchange. "I wouldn't." Another said the Max was "designed by clowns, who are in turn supervised by monkeys." The messages "further complicate Boeing's tense relationship" with the Federal Aviation Administration, which can't be pleased to read the disdain with which Boeing treated regulators. "I still haven't been forgiven by God for the covering up I did last year," one employee said in 2018. The memorably incriminating quotes aren't even the worst part here, said Dominic Gates and Steve Miletich at the Seattle Times. Boeing might say these were just employees blowing off steam, but there's no way to explain away more "sober" internal emails that show "a culture that prioritized cost cutting over everything else."

The fact that we're finding out about this now underlines "deep-rooted cultural problems at Boeing," said Brooke Sutherland at Bloomberg. The company claims it brought these documents to the FAA in December as a "reflection of our commitment to transparency." Please. That was nine months after the agency grounded the Max. "It defies reason that no one at Boeing knew that the company was sitting on another mountain of troubling messages." After this episode, it's going to be even harder to win back public confidence in the Max, said David Gelles in The New York Times. "According to Boeing's own research, 40 percent of travelers are unwilling to fly" on the Max — if it ever returns to service. Boeing once "represented the pinnacle of engineering," but its relentless focus on safety gave way to "obsessing over the bottom line." Said Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the heroic pilot who landed a plane on the Hudson River, "We've seen this movie before, in places like Enron."

That's right, said Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times, and just like at those places you need to lay the blame at the feet of the board of directors. The root of this crisis can be traced back to 2011. "Under explicit pressure from the board" to find a cheap way to build a new plane, then-CEO James McNerney decided to modify the aging 737 design instead of "designing a new aircraft from the ground up." At least seven of Boeing's 13 current board members were there in 2011 — including David Calhoun, the new CEO. This is a board full of celebrities, such as former South Carolina governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Yet it has nobody with any aerospace engineering experience, since the departure of Dennis Muilenburg. Boeing says it will require "safety-related experience as one of the criteria" for choosing future directors. That invites the question: "Why only now?"

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A Japanese billionaire is looking for a “single woman” to join him on a special trip in 2023 - to the Moon.

Fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa this week tweeted a link to a website dedicated to his goal of finding a women aged “over 20” to accompany him into space on a SpaceX rocket.

The mission will be the first lunar journey by humans since 1972, and 44-year-old Maezawa and his lucky guest will become the first civilian passengers to fly around the Moon - if the trip goes ahead.

What is space tourism?

Space tourism offers private civilians unaffiliated with any government body or space programme the chance to pay to go into space for recreational purposes.

US entrepreneur Dennis Tito became the first space tourist in 2001, flying to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket at a cost of $20m (£15m).

Six others have added their names to the exclusive list of private citizens who have journeyed into space, but no one has blasted off since 2009.

However, over the past year, space tourism has shifted from futuristic gimmick to serious business proposition, with Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and Boeing all vying to become leaders in the potentially lucrative market.

What’s the current state of play?

Virgin Galactic, backed by British billionaire Richard Branson, became the first publicly listed space company in October.

The firm - which says its mission is to become “the spaceline for Earth” - has already sold 603 seats to aspiring astronauts and has received thousands more “expressions of interest” from would-be customers, The Observer reports.

Chamath Palihapitiya, chair of the spaceflight firm’s holding company Social Capital Hedosophia, said he expects Virgin Galactic to start operating commercially this year and to be profitable by 2021.

But the immediate priority is to launch Branson into space before his 70th birthday, in July. “It’s gonna be a huge moment,” Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides told US broadcaster CNBC last week.

The race to take paying customers into space hotted up after Nasa announced last June that it would allow tourists to visit the ISS, for a fee of $35,000 (£27,000) per night.

The US space agency said that privately funded astronauts would be allowed to travel to the space station on US spacecrafts for stays of up to 30 days, as the BBC reported at the time.

Nasa officials added that private commercial companies would take responsibility for the crews and private astronauts, including checking they meet medical and training requirements for spaceflight.

Nasa has hired two firms to provide those services - Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which will use its Dragon capsule, and Boeing, which is building a spacecraft called the Starliner.

“These companies are likely to charge any private astronaut a similar ‘taxi fare’ to what they intend to charge Nasa for its astronauts - close to $60m (£45m) per flight,” according to the broadcaster.

Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, Blue Origin, is also looking to get in on the action. The firm has performed test flights of its tourism rocket, called New Shepard, as recently as December, and hopes to take paying passengers into space this year.

What does the future hold?

According to data from marketstudyreport.com, the space tourism market is expected to be worth $1.18bn (£900m) by 2024.

Blue Origin is attempting to build a lunar landing system in a bid to deliver the US government’s goal of taking humans to the Moon by 2024.

SpaceX is prioritising lunar travel too, and last September unveiled its Starship Mk1 - a prototype for the firm’s reusable launch system - which is capable of carrying up to 100 people to the Moon, Mars or other destinations in space or around Earth, as Space.com reported at the time.

Boeing’s contract to provide Nasa with space travel also allows for the opportunity to sell seats to private space tourists. In October, Boeing announced plans to invest $20m in Virgin Galactic to help develop commercial flights.

The recent advances have fuelled hopes that space tourism is about to take off.

“What’s exciting is that anyone can go, as long as they’re physically fit,” says Tamela Maciel from the National Space Centre in Leicester.

But while being fit may be an important selection criterion, so is being wealthy.

“There’s hope that the price will come down over time, as the technology becomes more advanced and less expensive to run. Though it’s safe to say it’s not going to rival Ryanair anytime soon,” says BT News.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. The Times editorial board

on the forced hand of a fiscally tight government

Flybe’s fortunes

“The failure of Flybe, the largest regional airline in Europe, would have damaged transport links in parts of the country beyond the cities. It operates 189 routes in Britain and Europe. Most domestic flights that do not include a London airport are operated by the company. It is responsible for the great majority of flights from smaller airports, including Anglesey, Southampton, Belfast City, Exeter and Newquay. For a new government that has put ‘levelling up’ Britain’s regions outside London at the heart of its agenda, Flybe’s collapse this week would have been particularly politically awkward.”

2. Anushay Hossain on CNN

on what the president deems insulting

Trump’s outrageous retweet of hate

“On Monday, the President retweeted a blatantly doctored, fake image of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer in Middle Eastern garb together in front of an Iranian flag... All of this is a new low, even for the impeached president who is infamous for making low blows, and it’s a new low for the people who work for him. Trump’s tweeting the racist pictures show that this president apparently believes portraying someone as Muslim and as sympathetic to a Muslim country is a good way to insult them. Making fun of Islamic clothing, reducing the world’s roughly 1.6 billion Muslim population to turbans and veils is offensive and incorrect, especially considering not all Muslims choose to cover or wear religious headgear.”

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3. Ahmad Sadri on Al Jazeera

on accountability in a secretive nation

Why did Iran lie about shooting down the Ukrainian plane?

“[American] whistle-blowers are seen as heroes, not public enemies - even when a president wishes to make such an allegation. They are protected by laws and valorised in public for their commitment to truth. The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran does the opposite. It is a unique blend of theocracy and democracy - and it is uniquely godawful when it comes to transparency. By covering the state under a sacred shroud of theocratic sanction, the system unifies, rather than divides its ruling elites. This makes a mockery of the separation of powers that is in the letter of the Iranian Constitution.”

4. Jessa Crispin in The Guardian

on a boring brawl in Iowa

Who won the Democratic debate?

“Look. We’re all tired of this. Every time they broadcast one of these debates the viewership drops by a lot. The candidates are tired of this, of being asked to explain within 40 seconds complicated policy and ideology. The viewership is clearly tired of being asked to decide the future of our country based on 40 seconds of information. The only people who are excited are the moderators, who get to have their big moment on cable television. What fun it must be for them to talk over someone explaining how we might lower insulin prices enough so that people don’t have to ration lifesaving treatment to ask how they feel about the latest Trump tweet.”

5. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. in the Wall Street Journal

on Boeing’s inconsistent self-reflection

Boeing emails explain nothing

“The email furor not only sheds no light here. It gets matters exactly backward. If the hypercritical people seen in these messages had known about MCAS’s design flaws, it never would have gotten through. Where are the emails referring to the last-minute changes that disastrously increased its scope of action, that allowed it to intervene during low-speed maneuvers right after takeoff, that made it repeatedly triggerable by a single, fallible data input?”

A Ukrainian International Airlines flight with 180 passengers and crew onboard crashed just after takeoff from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport early Wednesday, en route to Kiev, Iranian state media reported. The Iranian news reports attributed the crash to unspecified mechanical problems, and civil aviation spokesman Reza Jafarzadeh said a team of investigators is at the site of the wreckage. "The plane is on fire but we have sent crews," Pirhossein Koulivand, head of Iran's emergency services, told state TV, "and we may be able to save some passengers." Iran's Red Crescent later said there's no chance of finding survivors.

FlightRadar24 said the airliner appeared to stop sending data about two minutes into the flight.

Hours before the crash, Iran had fired more than a dozen missiles at Iraqi military bases that house U.S. and other allied forces. No U.S. casualties have been reported. There is no apparent connection between the two events, but the crash does contain elements from the largest news stories of 2019: U.S.-Iran hostilities, Ukraine, and Boeing's 737 — though this was a 737-800 jet, not the troubled 737 MAX, which has been grounded worldwide for 10 months.

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web:

Boeing's 737 Max jet now faces even more trouble, said David Gelles and Natalie Kitroeff at The New York Times. Last week, Boeing gave the Federal Aviation Administration a transcript of messages from 2016 that reveal that the jet's automated systems had raised alarms more than two years before two fatal crashes. In the messages, Mark Forkner, one of Boeing's top pilots, complained of "egregious" erratic behavior in flight simulator tests of a troubled automated system known as MCAS. In earlier discussions, Forkner had left the FAA — which agreed to let Boeing drop any mention of MCAS from the pilots' manual — with the impression the system was rarely used, and he had not told the agency that it was in the midst of an overhaul. "I basically lied to the regulators (unknowingly)," Forkner wrote in another message. The newly disclosed records "strike at Boeing's defense that it had done nothing wrong" and that regulators were to blame for the crashes.

The new information gives ammunition to lawmakers who were already "ratcheting up scrutiny of Boeing's leaders," said Andrew Tangel and Andy Pasztor at The Wall Street Journal. Boeing's engineers often played dual roles "designing certain systems on behalf of the plane maker and then certifying the same systems as safe" on behalf of the FAA. Investigators recently uncovered a three-year-old survey "showing roughly 1 in 3 employees who responded felt 'potential undue pressure' from managers regarding safety-related approvals."

Families of the crash victims aren't just seeking damages — they want regulators to order a complete re-certification of the Max, said Jim Zarroli on NPR's Morning ­Edition. "Such a move would be an enormous financial challenge for Boeing," which was counting on getting the Max back in the air by the end of this year. But "the possibility the 737 Max could be flying again soon has stirred" victims' families into collective action, including a call for a "soup-to-nuts examination of its design" by regulators. While that's unlikely to happen, the FAA's response after this latest news was "not encouraging," said Chris Isidore at CNN. Any further delay in the approval process "will be more than another black eye" for Boeing. It could shut the assembly lines for the 737 Max, until recently Boeing's best-selling plane. The company already has a backlog of more than 400 planes that have been built but can't be delivered until the plane is ready to fly again.

Boeing continues to dig itself into a deeper hole, said Brooke Sutherland at Bloomberg. Forkner's messages are bad; worse, the FAA, like the rest of us, is "only now finding out" about them, even though Boeing knew for months. Yes, the company did recently unveil an "organizational overhaul" intended to improve safety and transparency, and it stripped CEO Dennis Muilenburg of his chairman's title. But "for all of Boeing's talk about recommitting itself to safety, the company appears reluctant to fully come clean."

Boeing's now-infamous 737 Max was grounded around the world back in March. Assumptions at the time — including from yours truly — were that the worst-case scenario might keep the planes on the ground for a few months, and cost Boeing around $5 billion.

Well, here we are seven months later. The 737 Max remains on the ground, in what is now arguably the biggest crisis ever for the century-old company. Boeing has bled out at least $8 billion. And its third quarter results, released Wednesday morning, saw a 21-percent decline in revenue from last year's second quarter, to $20 billion, and 51-percent decline in profits to $1.17 billion.

It doesn't seem crazy to wonder if the 737 Max will ever fly again.

To be fair, most observers still assume it will. Boeing's stock price has actually been pretty stable since the initial hit from the grounding, bouncing between $340 and $390 per share. Which suggests investors remain confident that the whole issue will eventually get worked out. Boeing reported a $2.9 billion loss in the second quarter, after the crisis was well underway. Its quarterly sales fell to $15.8 billion — a 35-percent drop from last year's second quarter. Both those results and the latest third quarter hits are not good. But for a company that was pulling in a staggering $100 billion in annual revenue and roughly $10 billion in annual profits before the crisis began, they're manageable setbacks.

Both Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration are hopeful that the 737 Max could be recertified to fly by the end of this year. The pilot union for Southwest Airlines, the biggest purchaser of the 737 Max, recently predicted February of 2020. And European regulators suggest this coming spring.

But if nothing else, the saga of what was once meant to be Boeing's flagship airliner is a lesson in how wealthy, powerful, and knowledgeable people can have no idea what they're doing.

Like many of its corporate contemporaries, Boeing's institutional culture has come to prize financialization, profits, cost reductions, and corner-cutting. The 737 Max was meant to be Boeing's newest answer to competition from the European manufacturer Airbus. But Boeing also wanted the 737 Max to technically remain a mere update of its earlier model airliners, so as to avoid the regulatory rigamarole associated with rolling out an entirely new craft.

To gain improvements in size and fuel efficiency without crossing that threshold, Boeing had to design the plane with its advanced and heavier engines in an oddball spot. This caused the plane to perform in a strange manner. To correct for that, Boeing introduced the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), to automatically adjust the plane to cancel out the performance oddity without having to bother the pilot. Indeed, Boeing considered the MCAS such an innocuous addition that the company didn't even include it in the literature for the pilots. But the production process was under immense pressure; a lot of the MCAS software creation was outsourced to cheap labor; and there were at least two design choices that, to this day, no one can explain the logic for: The MCAS did not require agreement between two different sensory systems to function, and its automatic corrections were both extremely powerful and would repeat endlessly.

A multiple agency report, released earlier this month, also condemned the FAA's oversight of the process. The agency lacked much of the in-house expertise to scrutinize Boeing's design, and farmed out a lot of the oversight to company engineers and employees to essentially act as the agency's boots on the ground. This, of course, left those employees serving two masters, pressured to both assess the plane and also deliver it on-time and on-budget. Nor did Boeing properly inform the FAA about the development of the MCAS, particularly some significant changes made to the system midway through the process. It was a more or less perfect example of a philosophy that sees government's two greatest duties as minimizing its own spending and footprint while essentially acting as a handmaiden to business efforts.

It's also worth noting that inexperienced pilot error, and the slipshod cost-cutting of the Jakarta-based Lion Air, played some role in at least one of the crashes.

Put it all together, and in October of 2018 and March of 2019, two 737 Max airliners overwhelmed their pilots and nosedived to earth, killing a total of 346 people.

Boeing's CEO, Dennis A. Muilenburg, had also served as the chairman of the corporate board. But following the release of that scathing assessment of Boeing's internal process and FAA oversight, Muilenburg was stripped of the chairman title. He's now set to face a Congressional hearing any day now, while Boeing's board met in the last few days to figure out how to weather the latest fallout. And the company just replaced the head of its commercial airlines division.

Meanwhile, in a display of just how little trust they have in their American counterparts, European regulators have decided they'll recertify the 737 Max according to their own timetable and assessments, rather than their customary practice of coming to joint decisions with U.S. regulators.

Further adding to the hothouse atmosphere is yet another report that Boeing may not have properly informed regulators about complaints from one pilot about the MCAS system back during simulation runs in 2016.

In short, new and deeper layers of stupidity and malfeasance just keep emerging in this particular tale, and there's no particular reason to think we've hit bottom.

Thus far, the most dramatic course of action Boeing has even considered is temporarily halting production of the 737 Max. That discussion apparently surfaced in July, but there's been no decision made. Even going that far seems to strike many people as borderline unimaginable, given the hit not just to Boeing's business and its jobs, but to parts suppliers and buyers and the rest of the economy. Outside of a thought experiment from Barron's in July, no one appears to be seriously contemplating what would happen if the 737 Max wound up staying on the ground permanently.

The bitter irony is that, Barron's didn't think even this worst-of-worst-case scenarios was an existential threat. My initial prediction that Boeing would cruise through the crisis was based on the company's sheer pre-crisis scale. And while I wasn't nearly cynical enough about the depth of the problem or Boeing's incompetence, the company's latest report shows the buffer provided by those resources still holds. As Barron's noted, Boeing has other aircraft lines that could step up to fill the sales hole left by the 737 Max's demise. No doubt, it would be a smaller and more chastened company without the airliner. But it would probably survive.

Such is the wealth, power, and advantage of the corporate behemoths in late-stage American capitalism.

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The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has judged that the European Union broke its rules in subsidising planemaker Airbus, and has permitted in the process retaliatory tariffs from the US of up to $7.5bn.

It is the “largest penalty of its kind in the organisation’s history” and the latest chapter in a 15-year battle between the US and the EU over illegal subsidies to Airbus and its rival Boeing, says the BBC.

Airbus shares closed down 2% yesterday.

“The WTO’s ruling follows the decision in May 2018 that the EU had failed to eliminate billions in illegal aid to Airbus on two passenger aircraft - the A380 superjumbo and the A350 midsized jet,” says the Financial Times. “The WTO found that loans granted to these programmes by Airbus’s founding countries - France, Germany, the UK and Spain - were given at non-commercial rates that rendered the aid illegal.”

It concluded that Boeing suffered up to $7.5bn in losses annually because of cheap EU loans to its competitor.

“For years, Europe has been providing massive subsidies to Airbus that have seriously injured the US aerospace industry and our workers,’’ said US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer.

The news comes at a sensitive time for global trade, as only yesterday the WTO released a report sharply cutting its growth forecast for global trade, blaming, primarily, trade war tariff hikes for its pessimism. Stock markets on Wednesday tumbled. In London, the FTSE 100 eradicated all gains made since mid-August, and dropped 237 points to 7,122, falling 3.2%. It was the largest single-day fall since 2016.

But Donald Trump was triumphant. “It was a big win for the United States,” he said at a news conference.

A reporter quickly pointed out that the case was brought well before he took office, but the president was unrepentant. “The wins are now because they think I don’t like the WTO, and they want to make sure I’m happy,” he argued.

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“The targeted imports are worth $7.5 billion - the full amount the WTO authorized,” reports The Washington Post.

They will take effect on 18 October, with 10% for EU aircraft and 25% for everything else. “Gouda cheese, single-malt whiskey and large aircraft are among the European imports the Trump administration plans to hit,” says the newspaper.

According to The New York Times, though, Europe is prepared to fight back with its own raft of levies. “The WTO is considering a parallel case that the European Union has brought against the United States for subsidizing Boeing, and the EU has drawn up its own list of $20 billion in American products that it could tax in response to that case,” it says.

Cecilia Malmstrom, the European Commissioner for Trade, said: “Opting for applying countermeasures now would be shortsighted and counterproductive. Both the EU and the US have been found at fault by the WTO dispute settlement system. The mutual imposition of countermeasures, however, would only inflict damage on businesses and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic, and harm global trade and the broader aviation industry at a sensitive time. Our readiness to find a fair settlement remains unchanged.”

However, she continued: “If the US decides to impose WTO-authorised countermeasures, it will be pushing the EU into a situation where we will have no other option than to do the same.”

The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web:

Boeing finally managed to get some lift in its battered reputation at the world's largest aerospace convention last week, said Robert Wall and Andrew Tangel at The Wall Street Journal. The company secured "a blockbuster sale of 200 Max jets" to British Airways parent IAG, its first order for the once best-selling 737 Max since the plane was grounded in March following two fatal crashes. Airbus was "left fuming over the deal," which caught the rival plane maker by surprise. However, "despite the vote of confidence from one of the world's largest airlines, Boeing is far from over the Max crisis." More than 400 jets remain idled, awaiting regulatory approval on a software fix to the anti-stall system responsible for the crashes. Before the air show, Boeing had not sold a Max plane in months. Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger also testified before Congress last week that Boeing's accidents "should never have happened," said Devan Cole at CNN. The famed "Miracle on the Hudson" pilot told the panel that he recently "spent time in a simulator running re-creations of the doomed flights," and "even knowing what was going to happen," he struggled to save the planes. Pilots new to the 737 Max weren't even required to do a simulator run, instead learning about the new guidance system on an iPad.

The air show proved "it's not all doom and gloom for Boeing," said Phil Boucher at Fortune. Boeing remains "one of the world's two big aero-manufacturers and has a huge backlog of orders" for its other models, including 1,440 outstanding orders for its long-haul 787 Dreamliner through May. "In terms of publicity," the British Airways sale was "priceless," especially after IAG CEO Willie Walsh, a former 737 pilot, said he "would get on board a Max tomorrow." It was inevitable that Boeing was going to get out of "the aviation industry's version of timeout," said Brooke Sutherland at Bloomberg. "Airlines would be reluctant to tilt the market-share balance too much in Airbus' favor," and be stuck with just one big jet builder. Boeing's reputation won't be rebuilt overnight, but its customers remain supportive.

"The key thing will be for regulators to show the same vote of confidence," said aviation analyst Marisa Garcia at NPR. A rift has opened between European and U.S. regulators over how the Federal Aviation Administration first certified the Max jet and its flawed software. This could further delay Boeing's hopes of getting the planes back off the ground. Without approval from both domestic and overseas regulators, "there's always going to be a shadow of doubt about that aircraft." Boeing's "reluctance to take its share of the blame" isn't helping, said The Economist. The company has "insisted that its anti-stall software, known as MCAS, did not compromise safety" and instead points a finger at the certification process. That shows a disregard for its biggest constituency: passengers. CEO Dennis Muilenburg's "metronomic, defensive response to the disasters has compounded the mistrust." The regulators are obviously critical, but his focus should be "to convince the flying public at large to renew their faith in Boeing."

US regulators have extended the ban on the Boeing aircraft involved in two deadly crashes within five months, following the discovery of a new software problem.

On Wednesday, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it had identified a “potential risk” during simulator testing of the 737 Max 8, but did not reveal any further details, the BBC reports. The FAA has reportedly said that Boeing must address the newly discovered issue before the aircraft can return to service.

The 737 Max 8 has been grounded worldwide since March after the second of the two fatal crashes involving the aircraft. The downings of both Lion Air flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 are thought to have been caused by a new anti-stall system that inadvertently reduced pilot control over the aircraft.

“Boeing agrees with the FAA’s decision and request, and is working on the required software to address the FAA’s request,” Boeing said in a statement this week.

The Guardian reports that the new issue “means Boeing will not conduct a certification test flight until 8 July at the earliest”, and the FAA “will spend at least two to three weeks reviewing the results before deciding whether to return the plane to service”. It did not give a specific timeline.

Can Boeing get the 737 Max 8 back in the air and restore confidence in its products?

Why is the plane grounded?

Boeing has been working on its stall-prevention system known as MCAS since the Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October 2018 and the one involving Ethiopian Airlines in March of this year.

The plane was grounded in the wake of the second crash. Preliminary reports suggested that both incidents involved a failure in Boeing’s newly-implemented Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), an anti-stall system introduced on the 737 Max 8.

The system is designed to automatically bring the nose of the aircraft down if the plane’s Angle of Attack (AOA) sensors detect that the plane is pitched too high, thereby preventing a potentially catastrophic stall in mid-air.

However, an investigation revealed that the aircraft’s AOA sensor had fed faulty information to the MCAS, causing the plane’s nose to automatically pitch down and defy pilot inputs, eventually crashing. The combined death toll of the two crashes was 346.

The 737 Max was subsequently grounded by the world’s aviation authorities in March until fixes could be made.

What is the new issue?

CNN reports that a series of simulator flights to test new software developed by Boeing revealed a new flaw, but no formal statement has been issued as to the nature of the problem.

According to sources speaking to Reuters, an FAA pilot simulation revealed that when the MCAS system was activated, it had “taken longer than expected to recover the aircraft” manually.

“It was difficult for the test pilots to recover in a matter of seconds,” the source said. “And if you can’t recover in a matter of seconds, that’s an unreasonable risk.”

However, the BBC reports that other sources claim the problem was “linked to the aircraft’s computing power and whether the processor possessed enough capacity to keep up”.

Boeing said: “We are working closely with the FAA to safely return the Max to service.”

What happens next?

“The FAA recently found a potential risk that Boeing must mitigate,” the FAA said in the statement. “The FAA will lift the aircraft’s prohibition order when we deem it is safe to do so.”

Deutsche Welle reports that Boeing was “in complete agreement with the authorities on the matter and would continue to seek a solution”.

The company said: “Boeing will not offer the 737 MAX for certification by the FAA until we have satisfied all requirements for certification of the MAX and its safe return to service.”

The BBC adds that if regulators are unsatisfied with the software fix, the “microprocessor unit will have to be replaced and the grounding may stretch on for months longer than previously thought”.

As a precaution, American Airlines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines have all announced that they will not be using the Max as part of their fleets until at least September.

You could be onboard one of Boeing's most notorious planes by the end of the year.

The aircraft manufacturer has started the process to regain Federal Aviation Administration certification for its 737 Max 8 jets, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg told CNBC on Monday. Boeing recently issued a software update for the aircraft's flawed anti-stall system, and now Muilenburg says it should be back in use for commercial airlines by the end of the year.

737 Max 8 planes were grounded around the world in March after two of them crashed, killing 346 people total. A series of reports later tied the crashes to other reported issues with the model's anti-stall mechanism and suggested Boeing was aware of the flawed technology but didn't move quickly to fix it.

The FAA now has to recertify the aircraft before it can get back in the air. Boeing has scheduled simulated flights with the FAA for this week, Muilenburg said, and added that "we hope to schedule the certification flight very soon." The FAA would then decide if the Max 8 planes are skyworthy. So far in the regulatory process, the FAA found that more than 300 Boeing 737 jets had faulty wing parts that need to be replaced before they can fly again.

Watch Muilenburg's whole CNBC interview below. Kathryn Krawczyk

The Notre Dame fire was a feature on almost all UK front pages this morning, as the world continues to digest the horror of the blaze and the mammoth prospect of rebuilding the 850-year-old cathedral

The Times led on the cathedral’s narrow escape from destruction, while Metro focussed on the heroics of city firefighters, proclaiming: “They saved Notre Dame”.

Domestic issues making the front pages include Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s plans to make it easier for ex-cons to find work, the prospect of a top-level reshuffle at Boeing and experts warning that Theresa May will not have time to pass a Brexit deal before next month’s European Parliament elections.

Unsurprisingly, the Notre Dame fire also continued to dominate French front pages. Le Monde led its 14-page special on the inferno with the headline “Our Lady, our history”, while left-wing daily Liberation opted for a fitting pun: “Notre Drame” (our tragedy).

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing has admitted that a sensor malfunction was to blame for the downing of one of its 737 Max 8 planes in Ethiopia last month.

The statement by Boeing chief executive Dennis Muilenburg marks the “first time” the firm has admitted that its controversial new anti-stall system, rolled out on all 737 Max 8 planes, was a factor in the Ethiopian Airlines crash. The new aircraft crashed just minutes after taking off from Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on 10 March, killing all 157 people on board.

The circumstances of the accident bore a striking similarity to those of a deadly crash involving another 737 Max 8, operated by lion Lion Air, off the coast of Indonesia in November.

This crash was later revealed to have been caused by a failure in Boeing’s new Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), an anti-stall system introduced on the new planes. The system is designed to automatically bring the nose of the aircraft down if the plane’s Angle of Attack (AOA) sensors detect that the plane is pitched too high, thereby preventing a potentially catastrophic stall in mid-air.

However, an investigation revealed that the Lion Air aircraft’s AOA sensor had fed faulty information to the MCAS, causing the plane’s nose to automatically pitch down. Despite pilots' efforts to prevent repeated nosedives, the aircraft plunged into the Java Sea.

Fears that the same fate may have befallen the Ethiopian Airlines plane have now been confirmed, in a preliminary report by the Ethiopian government. Investigators say that the aircraft nosedived a number of times before crashing, indicating that the MCAS was again responsible for the crash.

Following the release of the report on Thursday, Boeing boss Muilenburg said: "It is apparent that in both flights the manoeuvring characteristics augmentation system, known as MCAS, activated in response to erroneous angle of attack information."

Speaking in a video released by the American firm, he added: "We at Boeing are sorry for the lives lost in the recent 737 Max accidents."

As Business Insider notes, Boeing’s reputation as the “gold standard for aviation is at a make-or-break moment” in the wake of the report, which found that the pilots of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines plane had “repeatedly” followed procedures specifically recommended by Boeing before the crash, and had not made any errors.

In a statement on Thursday, Ethiopian Airlines boss Tewolde GebreMariam said he was "very proud" of the pilots' "high level of professional performance".

Last month, Boeing rolled out a series of software updates and fixes to its automated flight control system on board the Max 8, having been “under pressure from crash victims’ families, airlines, lawmakers in Washington and regulators around the world” to prove that the 737 Max 8 is safe.

Boeing has grounded all 371 planes in the 737 Max fleet, after several countries, including the UK, barred the model from their airspace, The Daily Telegraph reports.

According to ABC News, Boeing has issued a software update that changes the function of MCAS in two significant ways. First, the aircraft manufacturer announced that if the two AOA sensors on the plane offer “widely different readings”, MCAS will deem it a faulty reading and will not activate a pitch-down manoeuvre.

Secondly, the firm added that if a scenario occurs in which the MCAS system is triggered, it will now perform the automated pitch-down only once, allowing the pilots to take control of the plane and negating the possibility of a faulty AOA reading causing the plane to continuously fight against pilot inputs.

However, Boeing is still facing questions from lawmakers over allegations that the firm did not provide adequate training for pilots, and that it is charging airlines extra for “critical” safety features.

Two safety features known as the AOA indicator and the AOA disagree light were not included in the aircraft by Boeing as standard safety features, but were available for an extra charge. The indicator displays the readings of the two sensors and the disagree light activates if those sensors do not agree – information that would have alerted the pilots of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines planes of a faulty AOA reading.

The firm now says that, along with the software updates, the AOA disagree light will come as standard on future models, but it will continue to charge for the AOA indicator.

An investigation of the Lion Air crash in Indonesia revealed that pilots of the 737 Max 8 did not have sufficient information about MCAS. Engadget reports that the aircraft maker has “also produced a new PC-based training program to help pilots better understand MCAS and how to react when the technology is in use”.

German newspaper Deutsche Welle reports that during Boeing’s overhaul of the MCAS systems, the firm this week discovered and subsequently admitted that the 737 Max 8 has “another software error” unrelated the MCAS issue.

Boeing did not disclose the details of the problem, but described it as a “relatively minor issue”.

However, the US Federal Aviation Authority warned that the newly discovered problem could affect aircraft safety, and has made the correction of the issue “another precondition for the aircraft to be allowed to fly again”, the newpaper adds.

The Boeing 737 Max passenger planes involved in fatal crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia both lacked the same safety features sold as optional extras by the aircraft manufacturer, according to reports.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa on 10 March, killing all 157 people on board.

The disaster came after another 737 Max 8 aircraft, operated by Indonesian budget carrier Lion Air, crashed in October, killing 189 passengers and crew.

The New York Times reports that both planes were operating without two additional safety features not included as standard that might have provided the aircrafts’ pilots with crucial early warning alerts.

Initial investigations into the disasters have identified a potential fault with flight-control software that automatically corrects the angle of the plane’s nose if it is judged to be at risk of stalling.

The software takes its readings from the plane’s angle-of-attack sensors. “One of the optional upgrades, the angle-of-attack indicator, displays the readings of the two sensors. The other, called a disagree light, is activated if those sensors are at odds with one another,” says the US newspaper.

The features “would have alerted the pilots to problems with their angle-of-attack sensors - the input suspected of causing the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) software to put both aircraft into a fatal dive”, says tech news site Ars Technica.

“They’re critical, and cost almost nothing for the airlines to install,” Bjorn Fehrm, an analyst at aviation consultancy Leeham, told The New York Times. “Boeing charges for them because it can. But they’re vital for safety.”

Investigations into both disasters are ongoing, and no formal link has been made between the crashes and the missing features.

However, a source told the newspaper that Boeing is to make the angle-of-attack disagree light a standard feature “as part of a fix to get the planes in the air again”. The indicator will remain an optional extra.

The company has already unveiled plans to update its MCAS software to allay safety fears.

Boeing has grounded all 371 planes in the 737 Max fleet, after several countries, including the UK, barred the model from their airspace until more is known about the cause of the recent accidents.

Meanwhile, Indonesian airline Garuda is reported to have cancelled an order for 49 of the jets, a deal worth around £3.75bn.

The 737 Max is Boeing’s best-selling model, so quelling safety fears is an urgent priority for the aerospace company, which “has orders for nearly 5,000 of the aircraft, enough to keep production lines operating for years to come”, CNN Business reports.

Wednesday's emergency order to ground Boeing 737 MAX aircraft is signed by acting Federal Aviation Administration head Daniel Elwell, and White House economic adviser Larry Kudrow tells The Washington Post that "brilliant" Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao had made the call, "working with the FAA." But Wednesday afternoon's announcement, after just about every other country had grounded the 737 MAX, was made by President Trump, apparently after Trump had agreed the FAA would announce the decision.

"In public and in private, Trump presented himself as a key arbiter in deciding whether the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 9 planes would be able to keep flying," the Post reports, citing unidentified White House and administration officials. The Post continues:

The FAA says the decision to ground the 737 MAX planes was based on a new analysis of satellite data, and White House officials said the FAA and Boeing had both argued to Trump that it was premature to ground the planes earlier. But "after Trump jumped in, some of the signature features of his presidency washed over the process," the Post says. "The typically plodding, data-driven forensic work of figuring out what caused an airplane to fall from the sky has given way to attention-grabbing tweets, administration infighting, and questions of government competence." Read more at The Washington Post.

As investigations into what caused both the Ethiopian Airlines crash last Sunday in Ethiopia and the Lion Air crash in Indonesia last October continue, attention has turned to pilot training.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that U.S. pilots received little physical training before flying Boeing's 737 Max 8 airplane — the same model of airplane involved in both incidents that was grounded worldwide following the crash in Ethiopia — in large part because Boeing was determined to get the plane on the market quickly.

After Airbus, a Boeing rival, announced in 2010 that it was introducing a new fuel-efficient and cost-effective plane, Boeing rushed to build its own version.

Because this new jet was a derivative model, regulators did not require additional simulator training for pilots, many of whom learned about the plane on an iPad, rather than traditional physical versions of cockpits that mimic flight experience. "We would have liked to have had a simulator," Jon Weaks, the president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said. "But it wasn't practical, because it wasn't built yet."

Investigations are focusing on automated stall prevention software, which possibly played a role in both crashes, but was not mentioned in training materials that a group of pilots who had never flown the aircraft put together. Read the full report at The New York Times.

Boeing's 737 Max 8 has been grounded. On Wednesday, the United States finally banned flights of the aircraft, following the same decision by 42 other countries. The Max 8 was Boeing's best selling aircraft ever, but one of the planes crashed on Sunday, and another crashed back in October. Both disasters may be linked to the same glitch.

You'd think this could be an existential threat to the aircraft manufacturer. There are 4,600 outstanding orders for the Max 8 around the world — $550 billion in expected future revenue. Max 8 sales this year were projected to be almost a third of Boeing's annual revenue. Not surprisingly, the company's stock is down about 11 percent.

But in truth, Boeing will probably cruise through this episode unscathed.

Analyses of the crashes are ongoing. But in the October crash, it looks like a particular autopilot function, relying on a single sensor, miscalculated and pitched the plane into an unexpected dive. Pilots across the world — including the U.S. — have been complaining about this glitch for a while. And there's circumstantial evidence the same thing happened in Sunday's crash.

Since the October crash, Boeing has been working on a software update to fix the problem: Have the autopilot function rely on input from multiple sensors, along with changes to "flight control law, pilot displays, operation manuals, and crew training." The fix was originally due in January, but was delayed by "differences of opinion about technical and engineering issues," between Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), as well as by the recent government shutdown, The Wall Street Journal reports. In the interim, Boeing issued some new guidance to pilots. And "the FAA concluded the delay was acceptable because its experts agreed with Boeing that there was no imminent safety threat," according to one of the Journal's sources. U.S. regulators now want the fix finished by the end of April, though new information gleaned from Sunday's crash could extend the timeline.

Now, that's not the most encouraging chain of events. But the gist is that all of the Max 8s currently in service, as well as all the aircraft on order, can be fixed. Barring something truly unforeseen, the grounding will almost certainly be temporary — a few months, give or take.

Analysts told The New York Times that fixing the software problem could cost Boeing $1 billion. Then there are the 350 aircraft already out there, and airlines aren't inclined to just eat the costs of keeping those Max 8s on the ground. "We will send this bill to those who produce this aircraft," Bjorn Kjos, the CEO of Norwegian Air, told the Times. Leasing a replacement jet for three months likely costs $1 million a pop, so multiply that by 350 and add it to Boeing's price tag, too. Another estimate for The Washington Post put the worst-case scenario at a $5.1 billion hit to Boeing over two months.

But those numbers also have to be put in context. Boeing's total revenue for 2018 was just over $100 billion and its total profits were just over $10 billion. You could double that worst-case scenario estimate, and you'd merely knock out Boeing's profits for 2019. And that hit won't continue year after year. For a company like Boeing, profits are gravy: They come after all operating costs, including wages and salaries and taxes, have already been paid. The only thing they fund are shareholder payouts.

That could certainly affect the company's stock. But a lower stock price has little effect on Boeing proper — it mostly hurts Wall Street traders. Simply put, even the worst-worst-case scenario would barely make a dent in Boeing's bottom line. And those huge revenue streams also mean Boeing could almost certainly weather any lawsuits over the crisis.

Finally, assuming Boeing does fix the issue in the next few months, it's unlikely that customers will wiggle out of those 4,600 orders. Airlines usually pay 20 percent of the orders upfront, and getting out of those contracts is not easy. Beyond that, Boeing enjoys a near monopoly status in this instance: The Max 8's only real market competitor is the A320neo, from the European manufacturer Airbus, and there's already a multi-year backlog of orders for that plane. If Boeing can make a reasonable case that it's repaired the glitch, customers will find that dropping their orders will be more trouble than it's worth. "I don't think anyone will abandon them," Jonathan G. Ornstein, the CEO of Mesa Airlines, told the Times.

The big unknown here is damage to Boeing's reputation. I've just given a pretty technical and bloodless assessment of Boeing's business chances. But 346 people are dead quite likely because Boeing screwed up.

Reputational damage is an inherently unpredictable and unquantifiable thing. But given everything laid out above, there are many structural barriers that reputational damage would have to overcome to seriously threaten the company.

In fact, this isn't even the first time a screw-up has grounded Boeing's planes recently. Batteries randomly catching fire temporarily grounded the company's Dreamliner in 2013, but Boeing suffered no noticeable long-term damage as a result. This crisis is obviously much worse. But the fact is, due to Boeing's sheer size and reach, it will most likely be consigned to the history books as well.

Whether you think that's a good thing is another matter entirely.

After President Trump announced the immediate grounding of all Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 jets Wednesday afternoon, following the lead of every major nation and airline outside the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration quickly took responsibility for the decision. The FAA said newly discovered similarities between Sunday's crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX 8 and a Lion Air MAX 8 crash five months ago raised "the possibility of a shared cause for the two incidents that needs to be better understood and addressed."

Acting FAA Administrator Daniel Elwell said U.S. regulators received "refined satellite data" Wednesday morning showing that "the track of the Ethiopian Airlines flight was very close — and behaved very similarly — to the Lion Air flight." Unspecified "evidence we found on the ground made it even more likely that the flight path was very close to Lion Air's," Elwell added. A senior administration official told Politico the new data arrived at 10:30 a.m., and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao called Trump with the decision at 1:30 p.m. after a meeting with FAA officials.

"It wasn't immediately clear what the FAA knew Wednesday afternoon that it couldn't have known earlier in the day, when Canada barred the 737 MAX from its airspace — also citing newly available data about the flights," Politico notes, "or on Tuesday, when the EU and other U.S. allies made the same call." And Trump was unusually involved in the decision, speaking with Boeing's CEO on Tuesday, touting Boeing as a "great, great company" when announcing the grounding of its jets, and appearing to catch at least Southwest Airlines — the largest U.S. user of 737 MAX jets — by surprise with his announcement.

Typically, Politico says, the FAA would announce the decision, not the president, and "countries would follow the lead of the agency that had certified the aircraft in question. In this case, that would be the FAA, which has historically been seen as the gold standard among aviation safety regulators."

Boeing has grounded its entire 371-strong fleet of 737 Max aircraft after investigators uncovered new evidence at the scene of the fatal Ethiopian Airlines crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it had found fresh clues including newly refined satellite data. Crucially, a number of similarities have been found between Sunday’s crash and a Lion Air flight in October, which claimed 189 lives.

Dan Elwell, acting administrator at the FAA, said: “It became clear to all parties that the track of the Ethiopian Airlines [flight] was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight.”

He added that “the evidence we found on the ground made it even more likely the flight path was very close to Lion Air’s”.

The BBC says that these words, which went beyond a precautionary tone, “will have set alarm bells ringing at Boeing's headquarters in Chicago”.

Boeing said that it “continues to have full confidence in the safety of the 737 Max” but that following consultation with the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board it had decided to ground the flights “out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft's safety”.

Dennis Muilenburg, president, chief executive and chairman of Boeing, said: “We are doing everything we can to understand the cause of the accidents in partnership with the investigators, deploy safety enhancements and help ensure this does not happen again.”

Commenting on the developments, Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told the BBC that “lives must come first always,” adding that “a brand is at stake as well, and that brand is not just Boeing - it’s America”.

The Ethiopian Airlines crash in Addis Ababa killed 157 people on Sunday, prompting countries including the UK, China, India and Australia to suspend the 737 Max.

Norwegian Air has announced it will seek compensation from Boeing after grounding its 737 Max 8 planes.

In a statement released yesterday, the discount airline said it expects Boeing to cover costs and lost revenue resulting from the temporary removal of 18 planes from its fleet.

“Many have asked questions about how this affects our financial situation,” said company founder and chief executive Bjoern Kjos.

“It’s quite obvious that we will not take the cost related to the new aircraft that we have to park temporarily,” he added. “We will send this bill to those who produce this aircraft.”

Before ordering the grounding of all Boeing 737 MAX airplanes on Wednesday, President Trump was concerned that the act would cause alarm and hurt the stock market, two people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

A Boeing 737 MAX 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines crashed on Sunday just minutes after taking off from Addis Ababa, and the United States was the last major country still allowing the planes to fly.

During discussions with White House and Department of Transportation officials, Trump acted like an expert, people in the room told the Post, saying the Boeing 737 "sucked" and praising the Boeing 757, the type of jet he personally owns. He tried to explain equipment found in different types of airplanes, and kept comparing them to his plane. "He was very much engaged in this," one official said.