OF THE
TIMES
Contracts for the purchase of troubled Boeing 737 MAX aircraft have been suspended indefinitely by a number of Russian airlines, according to Vladimir Afonsky, a member of the State Duma Committee on Transport and Construction.In the US, President Trump appoints Steve Dickson, the former chief of Delta Airlines' flight operations, to run the FAA:
He told TASS, with a reference to Deputy Transport Minister Aleksandr Yurchik, that these were contracts for the supply of several dozen aircraft to UTair, Ural Airlines, Pobeda Airlines and S7.
The indefinite suspension will last "until the circumstances of this situation [the two recent crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX planes] were ascertained," Afonsky said.
Ural Airlines had ordered 14 MAX aircraft from Boeing, with the first jet expected to arrive in October. Pobeda Airlines (part of the Aeroflot Group) was planning to buy 30 planes. It has not sealed a firm contract yet but had already made an advance payment for the aircraft.
US President Donald Trump has appointed the former head of flight operations for Delta Airlines to run the Federal Aviation Administration, currently under scrutiny for allowing the troubled Boeing 737 MAX 8 to carry passengers.See also: Flawed analysis, failed oversight, greed: How Boeing & FAA certified faulty 737 MAX
Steve Dickson, who spent 27 years with Delta before retiring in October as senior vice president of flight ops, is joining the agency in the midst of its most turbulent period in recent history, with Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao having requested an audit of its certification of the aircraft, two of which have been involved in horrific crashes over the past five months.
While Dickson's name had reportedly been under consideration since November, Trump allowed the FAA to go without an official head for over a year following the end of Obama-era agency chief Michael Huerta's term. Daniel Elwell, who led the FAA under George W. Bush, has been running the agency in an interim capacity without being confirmed by the Senate.
The man from Delta will be the first FAA head in three decades to have come directly to the job from a senior airline position - something of a pattern for Trump, who has recruited a number of cabinet members from the ranks of corporate America to staff the agencies tasked with regulating their former employers. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who previously worked for Boeing, is just one such appointment.
Comment: There seems to be an ongoing spate of aircraft disasters and troubles these days, from passenger jets, small aircraft, and even helicopters. While some can be explained either by criminal negligence or freak weather events many remain unsolved: