The ow factor

Full article on economist.com

As is always the case when an airline goes bust, the collapse of WOW Air, an Icelandic low-cost carrier, has left a trail of financial destruction at home and abroad. More than 1,000 airline employees have lost their jobs. Tens of thousands of customers will face a battle to recover money spent on unused tickets. Those in the middle of their trips are stranded. With a population of less than 350,000 people, Iceland’s economy is neither large enough nor diversified enough to shrug off the failure. Last year the government warned that WOW’s collapse would shrink GDP and send the krona, the local currency, plummeting...

Boeing, FAA's inaction over 737 MAX must be probed

Full article on forbes.com

The Boeing Company and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finally bit the bullet on Wednesday and grounded the global fleet of 737 MAXs – a new aircraft type that has suffered two catastrophic crashes in recent months despite being touted as one of the safest flying machines ever built.

America’s FAA should have been the first to ground the jet on Sunday, when prima-facie evidence pointed to similarities between the loss of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 that day and Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29th.

Instead, the U.S. regulator was dead last among respected international agencies to make the call. It waited more than 80 hours from the time of the second crash, with President Donald Trump announcing an emergency grounding Wednesday afternoon...

The facts have spoken: Boeing's 737 MAX needs to be grounded

Full article on forbes.com

‘If it ain't broke, don't fix it’ is one of my favorite maxims.

I find it odd, then, that Boeing has committed to making “an already safe aircraft even safer” by upgrading software on its 737 MAX series.

Coming on the heels of two major crashes by the type with glaring parallels – the first of which Boeing is already publicly linking to its existing software – the company’s narrative appears confused and contradictory...

Another brand new Boeing falls from the sky

Full article on economist.com & video summary

For the second time in five months, a virtually new Boeing 737 MAX airliner has crashed within minutes of taking off, killing all 149 passengers and eight crew aboard. On March 10th Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 departed from Addis Ababa, the carrier’s home airport, for what should have been a routine two-hour flight to Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. It fell out of the sky just six minutes later...