United Airlines has joined American Airlines and Southwest Airlines in removing the 737 Max from its schedules until early March 2020, a change aligning US carriers' expectations even as Boeing projects the aircraft will be flying before year end. United now expects its 737 Max flights will resume 4 March. It previously had removed the aircraft from its schedules until early January. The move scrubs an additional roughly 3,300 flights from Chicago-based United's schedule. The carrier disclosed the change in a statement that provides no details about reasons behind the decision.
"Moving forward, we’ll continue to monitor the regulatory process and nimbly make the necessary adjustments to our operation and our schedule to benefit our customers who are traveling with us," the airline's statement says. Assuming the Max returns to service in early March 2020, United will have cancelled more than 16,000 flights as a result of the grounding, which took effect in March, its figures show. Earlier this month, American and Southwest pushed back their expected Max reentry dates. American's schedule now has Max flights resuming on 5 March, and Southwest set the date at 7 March. Despite those moves, several days ago Boeing issued a statement saying it expects the US Federal Aviation Administration will clear the Max to fly in December. Once that happens, airlines will likely need to run pilots through new training.

Source: FlightGlobal

Argentinean investigators have found that a Flybondi Boeing 737-800 was out of balance before it tipped up and struck its tail while attempting to depart from Iguazu Falls airport last year. The aircraft had just commenced its take-off roll from runway 31 when, about 6s after its thrust levers were advanced, it abruptly pitched up at about 30kt, causing its aft fuselage to scrape the ground. Its crew aborted the departure and returned to the parking stand. Argentinean investigation authority JIAAC says the aircraft was transporting 65 passengers and a crew of six on a service to El Palomar at night on 16 July 2018. Budget airline Flybondi had acquired the aircraft (LV-HQY) three months earlier, in April, after it came off lease with Turkish Airlines as TC-JGH. It had been configured with 165 economy seats for the Turkish carrier but it was refitted in France with 189 economy seats for Flybondi. Airport handling documentation was updated, as required, to reflect the aircraft' new weight-and-balance envelope under the new seating layout, says JIAAC. The load and trim sheet for the flight lists the passengers as being distributed primarily in the front of the aircraft, with 38 in the two forward cabin sections and 27 in the two aft sections. This put the calculated centre-of-gravity at 22.2% of the mean aerodynamic chord. But JIAAC says the actual distribution "did not correspond" to that prepared on the sheet. All but a few passengers were located in the two aft sections, with just one person in the front cabin where 20 were supposed to be sat. The inquiry says this distribution would have shifted the centre-of-gravity to a position 38% of the mean chord, placing it "outside the flight envelope".

Source: FlightGlobal

Airbus's A320 family appears to have overtaken the Boeing 737 in terms of total orders, in the wake of the 737 Max crisis and strong single-aisle activity from the European airframer. Total A320-family orders by the end of October this year had reached 15,193 after Airbus secured firm agreements for almost 400 of the twinjets last month – including 300 from IndiGo. Boeing's customer data for the 737 shows total orders of 15,136 to the end of October. These figures include airframes for the US military. Airbus's latest backlog revision indicates that Taiwanese carrier China Airlines' order for 11 Airbus A321neos, sealed on 15 October, edged the manufacturer ahead of its rival. At the close of last year the Boeing 737 had been more than 400 orders in front of the A320 family. But the grounding of the 737 Max in March 2019 reduced the order flow for the family to a trickle, and Boeing recorded agreements for just 36 737s over the first 10 months of this year. Airbus still remains nearly 1,500 aircraft behind Boeing in terms of deliveries, however, with 9,086 A320-family jets handed over against 10,563 737s of all variants. Boeing took its first orders for the 737 in 1965 and delivered the initial aircraft to Lufthansa two years later. Airbus delivered its first A320, to Air France, in 1988.

Source: FlightGlobal