(Reuters) – Nine people were killed and three were injured in an airplane crash in the U.S. state of South Dakota, the Associated Press reported late on Saturday, citing authorities.
The aircraft, a Pilatus PC-12, carrying 12 people on board, was bound for Idaho from South Dakota before it crashed around noon on Saturday, the news agency said, citing National Transportation Safety Board’s Peter Knudson.
The cause for the crash has not yet been determined, the report said.
Reporting by Akshay Balan in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Schmollinger, Raju Gopalakrishnan
FILE PHOTO: A number of grounded Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft are shown parked at Victorville Airport in Victorville, California
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Boeing Co <BA> this week will present to the board of its largest 737 MAX customer, Southwest Airlines Co <LUV>, an overview of its plans to return the grounded jet to service, a spokesman for the airline said on Monday.
The meeting on Wednesday and Thursday comes after Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly said last month that the airline could look next year at diversifying its fleet beyond Boeing 737 aircraft. Budget-friendly Southwest has structured its business model around flying only 737 aircraft for the past 50 years and bet its entire growth strategy on the 737 MAX, the latest iteration of Boeing’s narrowbody workhorse.
With the MAX parked since mid-March following crashes on Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines that together killed 346 people, Southwest has had to scale back its growth plans and cancel north of 100 daily flights, wiping $435 million from its earnings between January and September.
Kelly, who is also Southwest’s chairman of the board, invited Boeing to address the timing and logistics of dozens of 737 MAX deliveries that it was supposed to receive this year. The meeting will also give Boeing a chance to defend its product and the steps it is taking to restore public confidence after the two fatal crashes, sources said.
“It’s an overview of the Return to Service Plan, timing, and plans moving forward,” Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz said. “Just a good chance for our Board to hear directly from Boeing, but nothing more to it than that.”
It is not the first time that Boeing has presented to a regularly scheduled board meeting, he said.
Southwest had 34 MAX jets in its fleet when global regulators grounded the aircraft in March. The airline was supposed to receive 41 more 737 MAX planes before the end of the year, but most of those deliveries are now scheduled for 2020.
Hundreds of undelivered 737 MAX jets are parked at Boeing facilities in Washington state, where the planemaker is facing a delivery logjam once the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration gives approval for them to fly commercially.
While Boeing is targeting approval in December, the FAA has pushed back on any fixed timeline.
Southwest has removed the 737 MAX from its flying schedule until early March. The airline has said it will need one to two months to train its pilots and prepare the jets for flight once regulators approve new software and pilot training.
(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Additional reporting by Tim Hepher in Dubai; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
(Reuters) – A World War Two-era B-17 bomber trying to make an emergency landing at an airport near Hartford, Connecticut, crashed and burned on Wednesday, killing seven people on board and closing the airport for several hours, authorities said.
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress took off from Bradley International Airport on Wednesday morning and the crew contacted the air traffic control tower five minutes later to report a problem, National Transportation Safety Board member Jennifer Homendy said at a news conference.
During the crew’s attempt to land back at the airport, the plane struck stanchions near a runway and careened across a grassy area and a taxiway before striking a de-icing facility, said Homendy, whose agency sent a 10-member team to investigate the crash.
Rescue crews from numerous emergency response agencies raced to the scene where a plume of thick, black smoke billowed skyward after the crash.
Seven people died in the crash and six others, including a worker in the de-icing station, were treated for injuries ranging from minor to critical, James Rovella, commissioner of the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, told the news conference.
A total of 13 people were on board the plane, including three crew members, Rovella said.
The names of the seven people who died have not been released pending notification of all the victims’ families. All the victims were adults, Rovella said.
ESCAPE HATCH
Some people on the plane opened an escape hatch and helped others get out, he said.
“During the course of the next coming days, you’re going to hear about some heroic efforts from some of the individuals that were in or around that plane,” he said.
The airport, located in the town of Windsor Locks, was closed for about 3-1/2 hours after the crash.
The plane was operated by the Massachusetts-based Collings Foundation, which is dedicated to the preservation and public display of automotive and aviation-related history.
“The Collings Foundation flight team is fully cooperating with officials to determine the cause of the crash of the B-17 Flying Fortress and will comment further when details become known,” the foundation said in a statement.
The vintage plane was one of only 18 B-17 aircraft still operating in the United States.
Reporting by Peter Szekely and Maria Caspani in New York, Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney
Comment: I have made several pilgrimages to see the Collings Foundation aircraft over the years, and some of my personnal photos of this aircraft can be seen below. Thank you
PARIS, Sept 5 (Reuters) – French judges have dropped charges against Air France and Airbus over a mid-Atlantic plane crash in 2009 that killed all 228 people on board, blaming the pilots for losing control of the plane.
In their conclusions, seen by Reuters, the judges said the pilots of the Airbus A330 had failed to process all the warnings and instrument readings provided by the aircraft.
The plane plunged into the ocean en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after entering an aerodynamic stall and falling from an altitude of 38,000 feet during a storm, its engines running but its wings losing lift.
“The direct cause of the accident is the crew’s loss of control of the aircraft’s trajectory,” the judges determined.
Other crews, faced with similar situations, had successfully maintained control of their aircraft, their ruling said.
The judges overruled the prosecutors investigating the case, who had recommended that Air France stand trial over the crash in July.
In their 2012 report, French civil accident investigators found the startled crew of AF447 mishandled the loss of airspeed readings from pitot sensors blocked with ice and pushed the jet into a stall by holding the nose too high. The report also cited poor training and the lack of a clear cockpit display for speed problems.
The three-year civil investigation was not designed to cast blame, which was the purpose of the separate judicial probe culminating in the decision on Thursday.
A lawyer representing the families of victims said an appeal against the judges’ decision would be lodged immediately.
“The judges have just written in black and white that the icing of the pitot sensors had nothing to do with the accident. It’s nonsense,” Sebastien Busy told Reuters. “If the pitot sensors hadn’t iced up, there wouldn’t have been an accident.”
The accident was the deadliest in the history of Air France and in the history of the A330.
A decade later, the aviation industry is still implementing lessons learned from the crash. Changes have focused on training, cockpit procedures and the tracking of aircraft in remote zones.
It took salvage teams nearly two years to locate the A330’s flight recorders on the ocean floor.
(Reporting by Sophie Louet and Emmanuel Jarry Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
MOSCOW (Reuters) – A unit of Russian conglomerate Rostec said on Tuesday it was ready for an out-of-court settlement with Boeing over its order for 35 Boeing 737 MAX jets, a spokesman for Rostec’s subsidiary Avia Capital Service told Reuters.
Boeing MAX 737 jets have been grounded worldwide and airlines are cancelling multimillion contracts following crashes in October and March that killed 346 people.
Earlier on Tuesday, Rostec said its unit had filed a lawsuit in the United States to cancel its order for the 35 MAX jets. The Financial Times, which first reported the move, said Avia Capital Service gave Boeing a cash deposit of $35 million.
A spokesman for Avia Capital Service told Reuters that delivery of the jets was first scheduled for October 2019 but was moved to March 2022. The Rostec unit had paid Boeing a deposit and was suffering losses from non-delivery, he said.
“If Boeing executives show a good will, we are ready to hold talks and find a mutually-beneficial out-of-court settlement for compensation of the losses we have suffered,” he said.
He added that the jets were ordered for a number of Russian air companies, including domestic low-cost firm Pobeda, a unit of the state carrier Aeroflot.
Russia is mainly using Boeing and Airbus jets for passenger flights, with a number of domestic airlines also adding Russian-made regional Sukhoi Superjet aircraft to their fleets.
The Rostec subsidiary now wants the deposit to be returned by Boeing with interest, along with $75 million in “lost profit” and about $115 million in compensatory damages, plus “several times the amount” in punitive damages, the FT said.
Rostec declined to provide further details about the lawsuit.
(Reporting by Gleb Stolyarov; writing by Anton Kolodyazhnyy and Tom Balmforth; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips/Katya Golubkova and Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
(Reuters) – Boeing Co said on Tuesday its deliveries fell about 37% to 239 planes in the first half of 2019, hurt by the grounding of its best-selling 737 MAX jets, putting it on track to lose the world’s biggest planemaker title after eight years.
Boeing’s deliveries lagged those of European rival Airbus SE, which handed over as many as 389 planes in the same period, up 28% from a year earlier, according to sources.
A new problem identified with the grounded MAX jets last month has delayed the aircraft’s entry into service until at least the end of September, disrupting schedules for airline operators and possibly adding to costs for Boeing.
The American planemaker’s net orders for the first six months was in the negative, with a total of minus 119 net orders. Boeing had minus 125 net orders as of the end of May.
Deliveries of the MAX aircraft were stopped in March, a few days after an Ethiopian Airlines crash killed all 157 people on board. Since then, Boeing has not reported any new order for the MAX planes.
Last month, British Airways-owner IAG signed a letter of intent to order 200 MAXs.
Boeing shares were down 0.5% at $349.4 in morning trade.
(Reporting by Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Anil D’Silva)
(Reuters) – Ten people were killed on Sunday when their private turboprop airplane crashed into a hangar during takeoff and burst into flames at the municipal airport in Addison, Texas, outside Dallas, an airport official said.
The twin-engine Beechcraft BE-350 King Air was destroyed by fire from the crash, according to Darci Neuzil, deputy director of Addison Airport, a general aviation facility located about 10 miles (17 km) north of downtown Dallas.
She said the plane had been headed for Florida when it took off at about 9 a.m. local time. Nobody on the ground was reported hurt, Neuzil added.
The plane had just lifted off the runway at the south end of the airport when it veered left, dropped its left wing and slammed into the hangar, the Dallas Morning News reported online, citing Addison fire department spokesman Edward Martelle.
There were no survivors among the 10 people who were aboard the aircraft, Neuzil said. Their identities were being kept confidential as authorities worked to notify next of kin.
“It’s a very sad day for Dallas County,” a local judge, Clay Jenkins, told the Dallas Morning News, which reported the plane had been en route to St. Petersburg, Florida. “My prayers are with the families we’re notifying about this tragedy.”
There was no official word on the cause of the crash. CBS News, citing unnamed sources, reported that the plane lost an engine on takeoff.
Video footage of the immediate aftermath showed flames and heavy, dark smoke billowing from the hangar, which according to local media was unoccupied at the time. Still photos posted online also showed a large gash in the side of the building.
Investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board were due to arrive on the scene later in the day, Neuzil told Reuters.
No further details about the circumstances of the crash were immediately available, Neuzil said.
Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Daniel Wallis in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler
(Reuters) – Eleven passengers and crew were killed on Friday evening when their plane crashed near an airfield in Hawaii, authorities said, during what broadcasters said was a skydiving trip.
The twin-engine King Air plane, with eleven people onboard, went down soon after takeoff from Dillingham Airfield and there were no survivors, the Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) said.
The fire service said the aircraft was engulfed in flames when fire crews arrived. “We are still gathering information as to the intent of the flight and what they were doing,” Honolulu Fire Department Chief Manuel Neves told a news conference.
The news report said the plane was on a skydiving excursion and the Federal Aviation Administration would investigate the crash.
The HDOT said Federal inspectors are continuing to investigate the cause of the crash.
Dillingham is a joint-use airfield operated by the HDOT under a 25-year lease from the U.S. army, according to its website.
FILE PHOTO: Bjoern Kjos, CEO of Norwegian Air Shuttle ASA, attends a press conference presenting quarterly report of the company, in Oslo
PARIS (Reuters) – Norwegian Air expects Boeing’s 737 MAX aircraft to remain grounded until at least the end of August, missing the European summer season, CEO Bjoern Kjos said on Friday.
“If you ask Boeing they still say June or July,” Kjos said at the Paris Air Forum. “But we’re already in mid-June – we’ve planned for the MAX to be out until the end of August.”
More than 300 Boeing 737 MAX jets have been grounded worldwide after two fatal crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia killed nearly 350 people. Some airlines now expect the plane to remain out of action until the end of 2019.
Norwegian, which operated 18 of the planes, has said the grounding will raise its costs by up to 500 million Norwegian crowns ($58 million). The low-cost, long-haul operator has delayed disposal of older Boeing 737 models or prolonged leasing contracts while it waits for their MAX replacements.
Boeing is awaiting a decisions by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on software improvements it proposed after the crashes and whether to require additional pilot training before flights can resume.
If more training is ordered, a shortage of simulators means that “it might be much longer” before commercial flights resume, Kjos said. “For some operators it could take up to a year.”
As a customer of Boeing’s GoldCare maintenance program, however, the CEO said Norwegian might not have to wait that long.
“We’d hope to be at the front of the queue,” he said.
(Reporting by Laurence Frost and Tim Hepher; Editing by David Goodman)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Aviation Administration said on Tuesday it had convened a multi-agency Technical Advisory Board to review Boeing’s proposed software fix on the grounded 737 MAX.
The board consists of experts from the FAA, U.S. Air Force, NASA and Volpe National Transportation Systems Center that were not involved in any aspect of the Boeing 737 MAX certification. The board’s recommendations will “directly inform the FAA’s decision concerning the 737 MAX fleet’s safe return to service.”
The plane was grounded worldwide in mid-March after two Boeing 737 MAX crashes in October and March killed 346 people.
Boeing, which has yet to formally submit the software fix to the FAA for approval, did not immediately comment Tuesday on the new review.
Some in Congress have urged the FAA to conduct an independent review into the anti-stall system at the center of investigations into two deadly plane crashes before allowing the planes to resume flying.
The board known as TAB will assess Boeing’s proposed fix to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), the FAA said.
“The TAB is charged with evaluating Boeing and FAA efforts related to Boeing’s software update and its integration into the 737 MAX flight control system. The TAB will identify issues where further investigation is required prior to FAA approval of the design change,” the FAA said.
The world’s largest planemaker, facing its worst crisis in years and the worldwide grounding of its top-selling jetliner, has said its software upgrade and associated pilot training will add layers of protection to prevent erroneous data from triggering MCAS.
The system activated in the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March and also during a separate Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October.
There are a number of other reviews ongoing, including a blue-ribbon committee appointed by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao looking at the FAA’s aircraft certification process.
Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department’s inspector general and lawmakers are investigating the FAA’s certification of the 737 MAX 8 aircraft.
A separate joint review by 10 governmental air regulators started last week and is expected to last about 90 days, but the FAA has said that a decision on ungrounding the plane is not contingent on that review being completed.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
