US regulators on Wednesday said that Boeing Co must address a new “potential risk” in the Boeing 737 MAX, further clouding the time frame for resuming service on the planes after two deadly crashes.
The issue, which surfaced during US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) simulator testing, concerns the ability of pilots to quickly reassert control of the plane if an automated flight handling system pushes the plane downward, a person familiar with the matter said.
The FAA “will lift the aircraft’s prohibition order when we deem it is safe to do so,” the agency said in an e-mail. “The FAA recently found a potential risk that Boeing must mitigate.”
Photo: Reuters
Boeing said the software fix for the 737 MAX that it has been developing for the past eight months does not currently address the matter.
“The Boeing Company agrees with the FAA’s decision and request and is working on the required software to address the FAA’s request,” Boeing said in a securities filing. “Boeing will not offer the 737 MAX for certification by the FAA until we have satisfied all requirements for certification of the Max and its safe return to service.”
In a media statement on Wednesday, the company also said addressing the “condition” would cut pilots’ workloads “by accounting for a potential source of uncommanded stabilizer motion.”
Boeing’s global fleet of 737 MAX planes has been grounded since mid-March following two crashes, which claimed 346 lives.
A key step in the certification is an FAA test flight, which has still not been scheduled until at least the week of July 8, a person familiar with the matter said.
Even before this latest issue surfaced, the outlook for getting the planes back in the air was uncertain, in part because the FAA would like other regulators to approve the plane’s re-entry soon after the US agency.
Some regulators have expressed support for requiring simulator training for pilots on the 737 MAX, an idea that was also endorsed last week by retired pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger at a US congressional hearing.
A requirement to have pilot simulator training would add cost and time to a resumption, in part because there are only four 737 MAX simulators on the market now.
Still, some panelists at the hearing noted that simulators on earlier Boeing 737 models could potentially be used.
US carriers such as American Airlines and Southwest Airlines have pushed back their time frame for flying the planes again until the end of summer.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts