Canada’s transport ministry on Monday said that it has approved the Boeing Co 737 MAX to fly again in the country from today, ending a nearly two-year grounding following two deadly crashes.
After a review of design changes and additional pilot training for the jetliner, Transport Canada said in a statement that it “will lift the existing Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) which prohibits commercial operation of the aircraft in Canadian airspace on January 20, 2021.”
“This will allow for the return to service of the aircraft in Canada,” it said.
Photo: Reuters
Canadian airlines, it added, are expected to be ready to return the aircraft to service “in the coming days and weeks.”
Canada’s No. 2 carrier WestJet Airlines Ltd has said that it plans to return its fleet of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to the skies tomorrow, after Boeing addressed technical issues and improved pilot training.
Air Canada and Sunwing Airlines Inc also have 737 MAX aircraft in their fleets.
The MAX crisis began in 2018 when one of the jets crashed in Indonesia, followed by another in March 2019 in Ethiopia, which killed 346 people and saw the aircraft taken out of service across the globe.
Brazil was the first country to allow it to return to service, starting with a domestic flight last month by Brazilian budget carrier Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes SA, followed by American Airlines Group Inc in the US.
Separately, Air Lease Corp is considering reinstating some previously canceled 737 MAX orders, although not until more regulators clear the jet’s return, Air Lease chairman Steven Udvar-Hazy said.
Los Angeles-based Air Lease, one of the world’s largest aircraft leasing firms, had committed to 195 MAX purchases as of the end of 2019, including orders, options and planes already delivered.
Then came COVID-19, which sapped demand for aircraft and led to the loss of more than 1,000 MAX orders. The jet’s extended grounding after two deadly crashes gave struggling buyers leverage to cancel purchase contracts, which are normally iron-clad.
Udvar-Hazy’s comments suggest at least a portion of the dropped orders could reappear in Boeing’s backlog, although restored purchases would likely have terms more advantageous to the airlines and lessors.
Air Lease canceled 19 MAX orders last year, while converting some to larger Boeing 787s. It has 107 unfilled orders for the single-aisle jet, the Chicago-based manufacturer’s Web site says.
Udvar-Hazy said that Air Lease expects to firm up its fleet plans by this summer, with a focus on the 737-8 and 737-9 versions of the MAX.
He said that the new total would not approach 200 jets.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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
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],”
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
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day