Norwegian Air demands Boeing compensate it for grounded 737 Max planes Wednesday, March 13th 2019, 1:31 PM EDT By Chris Isidore, CNN Business European discount carrier Norwegian Air is seeking compensation from Boeing for its grounded fleet of 737 Max 8 jets. Norwegian is the first airline to say publicly it will demand that Boeing pay for lost flight time. It is expected other airlines will follow suit. Aviation authorities throughout Europe ordered the grounding of the jets Tuesday in the wake of Sunday's crash of a 737 Max 8 jet operated by Ethiopian Airlines that killed all on board. It was the second deadly crash of the 737 Max 8 plane in less than six months. Norwegian has eighteen 737 Max 8 planes in its fleet, mostly for trans-Atlantic flights between Europe and the East Coast of the United States. The airline has ordered more than 100 of the 737 Max 8 planes. "It is quite obvious we will not take the cost related to the new aircraft that we have to park temporarily," said Norwegian CEO Bjrn Kjos in a recorded message to customers. "We will send this bill to those who produce this aircraft." Kjos apologized to customers affected by the grounding of the planes and said passengers would be taken care of by combining flights, reallocating aircraft and rebooking customers on other airlines. He said Norwegian lost just 1% of the airline's seat capacity because of the grounding, and he hoped the planes would be back in the air soon. Aviation authorities in most of Europe as well as Australia, Indonesia and China have barred the planes from their airspace. A growing number of airlines have also announced they won't fly the planes until they know what happened in Sunday's fatal crash. Boeing paid an undisclosed amount to airlines affected by a 2013 grounding of its 787 Dreamliner jets after some of the planes' batteries caught fire. It said the cost of that grounding was "minimal." The three-month grounding was worldwide, but it occurred when only 50 of those planes were in service. There are more than 350 of the 737 Max planes of different configurations that have already been delivered to airlines around the world. Spokespeople for Norwegian Air would not discuss how much money it would be seeking from Boeing for this grounding. Accurate estimates as to what Boeing would have to pay are difficult to come by. It is determined by terms of closely guarded sales contracts between the aircraft maker and its customers. Just being late with a delivery can cause Boeing or rival Airbus to compensate its customers. During the 787 problems in 2013, All Nippon Airways reported that it lost revenue of nearly $1 million for each of its 17 grounded planes in just the two weeks of the shutdown. It said it would seek compensation from Boeing to cover that loss. Boeing and the FAA have said they expect to have a software upgrade available by next month to deal with problems detected in a fatal crash of a 737 Max 8 Lion Air flight last October. During the the Lion Air crash in Indonesia nearly six months ago, the pilots fought to take control of the plane when its nose was forced down by an automatic safety feature. Everyone onboard was killed. Boeing and the FAA has insisted that the plane is currently safe to fly with proper training for pilots, and have not agreed to a grounding of US flights.
See that, "newly refined satellite data." In other words, if everyone was still flying this plane, we would've blamed those damn brown people for crashing it.
Boeing Concerns The Seattle Times asked Boeing and the FAA about crucial flaws in the safety analysis that Boeing had provided the regulator for its new 737 MAX, including a massive understatement of the power of the plane's new flight control system—before the Ethiopian Airlines crash that bore a striking resemblance to the Lion Air crash that was due to that system. Experts told the paper it was inappropriate for the FAA to delegate so much safety certification to the companies it regulates. Now the Transportation Department is investigating. Seattle Times
737 Crashes French investigators who looked at data from the doomed Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max flight say there were "clear similarities" between that disaster and the Lion Air crash last year involving the same type of plane. The jets are currently grounded around the world. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg says the firm will maintain its "relentless commitment to make safe airplanes even safer." CNBC
Norwegian Air Norwegian Air chairman Bjorn Kise has resigned, not long after the airline revealed it would have to cancel dozens of flights because of the 737 Max groundings. That's far from the carrier's only problem, though—it's already on dodgy financial ground. Kise: "It has not been an easy decision, but after 25 years on the board, many of which as chairman, I am confident that this is the right decision. I have now reached an age where it is time to make room for new forces." Financial Times
FAA Chief The Federal Aviation Administration may finally have a chief for the first time in about a year, after President Trump nominated former Delta flight operations boss Stephen Dickson. The president previously considered his personal pilot for the post, according to reports. If confirmed by the Senate, Dickson would join the FAA at a time when the agency is under serious fire over its vetting of Boeing's grounded 737 Max planes. Fortune
Boeing Orders In the first concrete commercial consequence of the recent 737 Max crashes and groundings, an airline—Indonesia's Garuda—has cancelled an order for the Boeing planes. The flag carrier had ordered 50 737 Max 8s at a cost of $4.9 billion, and has already received one, but now says its passengers no longer trust the craft, so it no longer wants the other 49. Guardian