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Emirates

Emirates Places $52 Billion Order For 95 Boeing Aircraft Jets

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Emirates Airline announced on Monday that it placed an order for 95 Boeing aircraft jets valued at $52 billion. This marks the first major deal of the 2023 Dubai Airshow.

According to reporting from CNBC, “the state-owned flagship Dubai carrier, a subsidiary of Emirates Group, is ordering 55 additional Boeing 777-9s and 35 of its 777-8s, bringing the airline’s total orders for the 777X wide-body jets to 205 units. 

It is also updating its order of Boeing 787 Dreamliners from 30 to 35, comprised of 15 787-10s and 20 787-8s.”

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Emirates also ordered 202 General Electric engines that will power the new 777X aircraft, which can fly up to 18 hours. 

The airline already operates the largest number of Boeing 777 aircraft out of any other airline in the world. The increase in demand for wide-body jets emphasizes the importance of the market in the Middle East and its supplies for the aircraft models. 

According to analysis from AllianceBernstein, a wealth management firm, “Middle East customers now account “for the largest portion of combined Airbus and Boeing wide-body passenger backlog at 30% of the global total.”

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The Middle East also has the major role of being a connection hub for long haul journeys. Boeing and Airbus are two companies that have been the biggest source of demand for wide-body jets “with buoyant long-term growth outlooks and healthy recovery in air travel demand since the Covid-19 pandemic fueling airlines’ optimism and orders,” according to CNBC. 

“Emirates is the biggest operator of Boeing 777 aircraft, and today’s order cements that position. We’ve been closely involved in the 777 program since its start up until this latest generation of 777X aircraft,” Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of Emirates Airline and Group, said during a news conference.

“The 777 has been central to Emirates’ fleet and network strategy of connecting cities on all continents non-stop to Dubai. We are pleased to extend our relationship with Boeing and look forward to the first 777-9 joining our fleet in 2025,” he said.

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NASA Planes Could Lead To More Sustainable Air Travel By The 2030s

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NASA has revealed plans for two aircraft projects that they are hoping will be the next generation of sustainable flights. 

One of the aircrafts is called X-66A, which NASA and Boeing worked together on as a part of Boeing’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, according to reports. The two companies have the goal of building, testing, and flying the planes, which will be emission-reducing, single-aisle aircrafts, within the next decade; by 2030 ideally. 

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“It’s our goal that NASA’s partnership with Boeing to produce and test a full-scale demonstrator will help lead to future commercial airliners that are more fuel efficient, with benefits to the environment, the commercial aviation industry, and to passengers worldwide,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement according to CNN. 

“If we are successful, we may see these technologies in planes that the public takes to the skies in the 2030s.”

The design could potentially reduce fossil fuel consumption and emissions by up to 30% when compared to current aircrafts. 

According to NASA and Boeing, the concept of design is known as the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing, which relies on elongated thing wings that are stabilized by diagonal struts connecting to the wings of the plane, creating less of a drag and thus reducing the fuel that is burned. 

The new designs were shown off at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.

“This is an experimental aircraft. This is not a commercial development of an aircraft that passengers are going to fly in today. And the reason we need to do this is because this is high-risk technology. We’re trying to validate technology,”  Bob Pearce, NASA associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, said.

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The first test flight is scheduled to ideally take place in 2028, with NASA hoping that the technology and new design will be used throughout around half of the commercial flight market for short to medium haul single-aisle aircrafts. 

According to NASA, single-aisle aircrafts account for almost half of all aviation emissions around the world. Boeing also predicts that the demand for these single-aisle aircrafts will increase by 40,000 planes between the years 2035 and 2050. 

“The goal is for the technology to serve about 50% of the commercial market through short- to medium-haul, single-aisle aircraft,” Nelson said.

As a part of NASA’s Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration project, the hybrid electric aircraft that GE Aerospace and magniX are developing will also be getting an updated look to include lighter and more efficient motors, and utilize materials that will also improve fuel use to reduce emissions. 

Within the next five years, NASA is hoping to conduct at least two flight demonstrations to show off the new technology, so that ideally the aircrafts can be introduced commercially in the US between 2030 and 2035.

Boeing Airplane

Boeing Set To Pay $2.5 Billion In Settlements Over 737 Max Fraud

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Boeing will pay more than $2.5 billion to settle criminal charges that the company repeatedly lied about the 737 Max’s engineering problems which eventually led to two catastrophic crashes that killed hundreds of individuals; both crashes had no survivors. 

The company admitted to one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, and beyond the settlements the company will face no further charges from the US Department of Justice. Acting Assistant Attorney General David Burns of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division recently released a statement regarding the charges. 

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“Boeing’s employees chose a path of profit over candor by concealing material information from the FAA concerning the operation of its 737 Max airplane and engaging in an effort to cover up the deception.” 

Boeing is the nation’s second-largest defense contractor, and is now set to pay the Department of Justice a criminal penalty of $246.6 million. “The families and legal beneficiaries of the 346 passenger victims who died in the Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia in October 2018 and the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in Ethiopia five months later will be paid from a fund of $500 million,” according to Burns. 

If split evenly that would equate to around $1.4 million for each family. A majority of the settlement will be given to airline companies that had purchased the faulty 737 Max aircraft and were forced to ground all of the planes following the two crashes. According to the Department of Justice all of the airlines impacted will receive $1.77 billion in compensations for their financial losses. 

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“The tragic crashes of Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 exposed fraudulent and deceptive conduct by employees of one of the world’s leading commercial airplane manufacturers.” 

Both crashes were caused by changes in the airplane’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System which forced the nose of 737 Max to tilt towards the ground, leaving the pilots completely powerless in preventing a fatal crash landing. 

Boeing President and Chief Executive Officer, David Calhoun, recently sent out a note to his employees throughout the nation, explaining that he “firmly believes that entering into this resolution is the right thing to do for Boeing, and is a step that appropriately acknowledges how the company fell short of its values and expectations.” 

“This resolution is a serious reminder to all of us of how critical our obligation of transparency to regulators is, and the consequences that our company can face if any one of us falls short of those expectations,” Calhoun continued. Internal Boeing documents revealed that engineers of the 737 Max aircraft notified the company of the Augmentation System’s “egregious problems” as early as 2016, so many are upset with the settlement announcement, claiming the company should be much more severely punished for such a careless mistake that claimed so many innocent lives.

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Boeing Under Fire For ‘Gambling With Public Safety’ After Two Crashes 

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According to a report from US politicians, Boeing has jeopardized the safety of passengers by cutting certain costs and ignoring software flaws that contributed to two fatal crashes. The cut costs and software flaws mainly existed in the development of Boeing’s 737 Max, an aircraft that has since been grounded indefinitely. 

The first crash occurred in 2018 and involved a Lion Air 737 Max, and the second occurred in 2019 at an Ethiopian Airlines; in total 346 individuals were killed between both crashes. The committee on transportation and infrastructure – made up of members of the House of representatives – in the US published their report on Wednesday, and within the report they claim that “there have been repeated and serious failures by Boeing and its regulator, the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), in allowing the faulty aircraft to carry passengers.”

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Democratic representative Peter DeFazio is the committee’s chair and expressed that Boeing and the FAA “gambled with public safety in the critical time period between the two crashes.” He attributes these failings to a “broken” safety culture at the company, and several gaps in the system that the FAA uses to regulate safety systems on these planes. These gaps are what led to the fatal crashes. 

After new reports of software fixes and new rounds of testing for the 737 Max plane, Boeing is hoping to re-certify the aircraft for public use. Between the coronavirus pandemic and these recent failings from Boeing, the company has had to cut over 16,000 jobs, so they’re hoping the re-certification of the 737 can help them recover. 

Boeing has been under investigation for the past 18 months, and within that investigation officials found that the company had cut some major costs in order to compete with its biggest competitor, Airbus. The report from the US government claims that this competition added an extreme financial strain to Boeing’s spending, which led to even more cut corners. 

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“Among other things, this pressure resulted in extensive efforts to cut costs, maintain the 737 Max program schedule, and avoid slowing the 737 Max production line. There are several instances where the desire to meet these goals and expectations jeopardized the safety of the flying public.”

The report also found that Boeing had made some major errors in their aircraft design, specifically regarding the system put in place for the pilot should a crucial system malfunction during a flight. This system is referred to as the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, and it was initially designed to push the nose of the plane down during certain flying conditions to prevent it from stalling. However, this system kicked in on both fatal flights shortly after takeoff because of a faulty sensor. 

The report also criticized the FAA greatly on their relationship with Boeing and complete lack of concern over these safety measures that have been overlooked. Boeing not only withheld information from the FAA, but were able to influence their regulator into approving certain flights for travel. 

Boeing is currently working on regaining regulatory approval for its 737 Max aircraft, and the company has “full confidence in its safety,” however, the real test will be to see what airlines continue to have a relationship with Boeing as time goes on.

Electric Car

Boeing And Porsche Team Up In Hopes To Make Worlds First Flying Electric Car

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Boeing, the major United States air crafting developer, and Porsche, German car company, are teaming up to potentially give the world its first ever electric flying car. The two companies made the announcement on Thursday, stating that they want to “explore the premium urban air mobility market and the extension of urban traffic into airspace,” through “a fully electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle,” according to CNN. 

The announcement was overall very vague. They didn’t include any target release date, how much money each would be contributing, or how much they predict these flying cars would even cost. However, getting into the electric car business has been a plan for Volkswagen, Porsche’s parent company, for a few years now. The company announced recently that it plans to begin to develop and distribute more electric vehicles throughout the next decade in an effort to reduce their carbon footprints. Volkswagen, more specifically, wants to distribute up to 22 million electric car variations throughout its many brands, I guess the one for Porsche just happens to be a flying one in development. 

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“We are combining the strengths of two leading global companies to address a potential key market segment of the future. In the longer term, this could mean moving into the third dimension of travel,” says Detlev von Platen, a member of the Porsche board in charge of sales and marketing. 

“Porsche and Boeing together bring precision engineering, style and innovation to accelerate urban air mobility worldwide,” said Steve Nordlund, general manager of Boeing NeXt, a unit of the company working on next generation vehicles and aircraft.

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Boeing alone brought in over $100 billion in revenue in 2018, according to CNN, and has already made headlines through the creation of some “air taxi” prototypes. Earlier this year Boeing even did a few test flights of its autonomous air taxi. The vehicle’s didn’t actually go to any destination, or even have anyone on board, but the preliminary hover tests are essential to the production of any future products, perhaps like the one upcoming with Porsche. Boeing is one of the first companies to try to enter into the “air taxi” field, but close behind them are brands like Airbus, and even Uber, all of which are trying to enter into what they believe is the next big mode of transportation. 

Critics are responding to these new innovative “ideas” from all these companies with questions over the logistics. Tesla was able to make headlines by developing and distributing the now very popular self driving cars and SUVs, however, even those are experiencing some major malfunctions as newer features are added to them. So consumers are worried that if manufacturers can’t perfect self-driving cars, how are they going to master the science behind flying cars? If only George Jetson could be reading this article right now…

“Boeing has a production style product flying and has gone to the extent of publicizing the efforts. That shows that Boeing is taking this urban area mobility thing quite seriously. We have the ingredients for a different generation of aircraft that wasn’t really feasible 10 years ago. We’re going back to that golden age of innovation where people are trying new things,” says Eric Bartsch, CEO at VerdeGo Aero, which develops the power systems for Boeing.