A child traveling on Delta Air Lines had to use a bag as a toilet in the aisle after the plane was stuck on the tarmac for six hours, according to a report by the local television station WJCL in Savannah, Georgia.
27.07.2023 - 18:12 / smartertravel.com / Richard Blumenthal
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes that were taken out of service earlier this year following a pair of fatal crashes will not return to the skies in 2019. American, Southwest, and United have all removed the aircraft from their schedules until January 2020, meaning the aircraft will be grounded for at least 10 months before they take off again.
Boeing has said the 737 MAX 8 would be re-approved by the end of the year, but the FAA has not publicly committed to that timeline. The FAA is handling this process very deliberately, as its own oversight (or, lack thereof) is at the heart of the situation. It’s generally accepted that other similar agencies, such as the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), will wait longer than the FAA to re-certify the MAX 8 themselves. If and when the plane is cleared to fly, the planes will likely be phased in slowly over several weeks or months.
Related:The Ultimate Holiday Travel Survival GuideThe grounding was initially thought to be a manageable inconvenience. Neither airline flies many of the MAX 8 aircraft, so their absence was fairly easy to cover up. But as the grounding stretches on and enters the busy holiday period, travelers and airlines alike are feeling the pinch. Bumping spiked this summer partially due to the 737 MAX grounding, and airlines are struggling to maintain expanded capacity.
As has been the case throughout this saga, the questions go well beyond simply when the 737 MAX will fly again. Will anyone want to fly on these planes even once they’re cleared?
Boeing (and the FAA) Under FireWhile it works on a fix, Boeing is also starting to face the music: CEO Dennis Muilenburg was stripped of his Chairman role last week as he focuses on getting the MAX back in the air. That move came on the heels of a what Bloomberg calls a “scathing” report outlining “missteps by the company and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in the development and certification of the MAX.”
According to Bloomberg, “Boeing exerted ‘undue pressures’ on some of its own employees who had FAA authority to approve design changes,” and “regulators assessing the aircraft sometimes didn’t follow their own rules, used outdated procedures, and lacked the resources and expertise to fully vet the design changes implicated in two fatal crashes.”
The New York Times added the report also found that “the Federal Aviation Administration relied heavily on Boeing employees to vouch for the safety of the MAX and lacked the ability to effectively analyze much of what Boeing did share about the new plane.”
“This report confirms our very worst fears about a broken system,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, according to the Times. “To put the fox in charge of the henhouse never
A child traveling on Delta Air Lines had to use a bag as a toilet in the aisle after the plane was stuck on the tarmac for six hours, according to a report by the local television station WJCL in Savannah, Georgia.
Bolivia’s tourism reputation is generally as a rugged backpacker destination with a few otherworldly gems for more sophisticated travelers—namely the Uyuni Salt Flats and La Paz’s buzzy culinary scene. But as my kids and I recently discovered on a multi-city road trip in the western part of the country, Bolivia has a diversity of landscapes (caves, deserts, and meteor-crash sites), distinct urban centers (silver mining towns and white-washed World Heritage cities), and colorful boutique hotels.
Space enthusiasts up and down the East Coast may be able to see NASA’s next rocket launch with their own eyes.
Paris will allow people to swim in the Seine following the 2024 Olympics for the first time in more than 100 years.
Every time I take a trip to Las Vegas, I visit the Bellagio Conservatory & Botanical Gardens. Stationed directly next to the hotel lobby, the 14,000-square-foot botanical garden features a seasonal showcase of sculptures, plants, flowers, water features, music, and digital projections.
The pending FAA reauthorization bill has served as a kind of magnifying lens on several weighty issues facing travel suppliers and their customers.
Travel over the Thanksgiving holiday period was robust, and predictions are for similarly strong demand for air travel during the period between Christmas and New Year’s. For most airlines, that’s good news. For American, however, it’s a potential nightmare.
It wasn’t that long ago that Southwest’s self-proclaimed identity as the Love Airline was a credible bit of branding, reflecting a virtuous circle of contentment among the airline’s customers, employees, and shareholders. For now, however, the love fest appears to be over.
Update: September 27, 2019
In the three weeks since the FAA grounded Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft, we’ve learned a lot about the plane and what likely caused the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes. But we’re still waiting to hear when, exactly, Boeing will have a fix for the aircraft to return to the skies.
As reported yesterday, the U.S. has grounded all Boeing 737 MAX 8 and MAX 9 aircraft until further notice. The move came after most major international regulatory bodies took similar action, notably in the Europe, the U.K., and Canada.
Two models of Boeing’s latest twin 737 MAX 8 jet have crashed in the last six months: An Ethiopian Airlines flight headed for Nairobi on March 8, and October’s Lion Air flight that crashed off Jakarta. Both flights went down shortly after takeoff, killing all onboard. Since Sunday’s crash over 25 airlines grounded their models of the plane. On Wednesday the Trump administration followed other governments, including those of Canada, China, Germany, France, Indonesia, Malaysia, Qatar, and the United Kingdom, in calling for the planes to be grounded and banned the aircraft from domestic airspace.