Boeing bonuses for safety, a United pilots hiring freeze, a new lawsuit, and more: Boeing news roundup
Plus, American Airlines buys more Boeing planes despite the 737 Max woes
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Boeing had another tough week. It started with passengers on the Alaska Airlines flight whose Boeing 737 Max 9 door plug blew out are suing the airplane manufacturer for $1 billion. Things didn’t get any easier, as the company got more dings from regulators and more incidents that can’t be making things any easier on the company’s PR team. Although American Airlines gave a vote of confidence by ordering more planes, United said it had to institute a hiring freeze because the planes it already ordered aren’t ready yet. And now union negotiations are starting. What a way to kick off March.
Check out the slideshow above for highlights from a busy week in Boeing news.
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Boeing workers, whose output has been under a whole lot of scrutiny lately, have recently complained about being overworked and underpaid. One way that companies try to fix compensation issues without the long-term fixed cost of higher salaries and hourly rates is with bonuses. In light of everything that’s been going on its commercial aviation division, the aircraft manufacturer is shifting the driver of bonuses for those workers from financial considerations to safety ones.
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United Airlines is pausing its pilot hiring in the spring due to delays in aircraft delivery from Boeing. The Chicago-based airline told staff that a hiring freeze would come into effect in May and June before partially resuming in July, according to an internal memo. The memo was sent to staff by United’s vice president of flight operations, Marc Champion, and vice president of flight operations planning and development, Kirk Limacher.
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American Airlines said it’s ordering nearly a hundred new planes from beleaguered aircraft manufacturer Boeing. The Texas-based airline said it ordered 85 Boeing 737 Max 10 aircraft, 10 of which have been upgraded from a previous order of 30 737 Max 8 jets.
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Boeing is facing a second lawsuit from passengers aboard the tumultuous Alaska Airlines flight that’s grabbed headlines since January. But this time, the passengers put a price tag on their suffering — a big one.
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The Federal Aviation Administration found that Boeing failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements in “multiple instances,” following a six-week audit the aviation safety regulator launched in response to a nearly catastrophic Jan. 5 incident involving an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 aircraft.
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After it door plug blew out on an Alaska Airlines 1282 in early January, Boeing has been under close scrutiny by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). And according to the NTSB’s chair, it still has not provided the names of the 25 staffers the regulatory group suspects had a hand in the malfunction.
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A United Airlines jetliner bound for Japan made a safe landing in Los Angeles on Thursday after losing a tire while taking off from San Francisco. Fire engines stood by at Los Angeles International Airport but weren’t needed, as the Boeing 777 made an uneventful landing and stopped about two-thirds of the way down a runway. Airport spokesman Dae Levine said the plane landed safely.
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Federal investigators said they confirmed pilots’ account of a brief failure of rudder controls on a Boeing 737 Max after it landed at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey last month. United Airlines pilots said pedals that control rudder movement on the plane were stuck as they tried to keep the plane in the center of the runway during the Feb. 6 landing.