At the Europe 2024 convention in Berlin, Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury expressed fears about maintaining the aerospace industry’s reputation for safety.
At the event, Bloomberg reports, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said: “Now I prefer to do it through Airbus rather than Boeing; My relatives also care about me. “
A vote by aviation industry journalist Jon Ostrower, founder of aviation news newspaper The Air Current, suggests that confidence in Boeing jets is waning, but it hasn’t been lost.
Ostrower’s poll, conducted on X, officially Twitter, posed the question: “With the return to service of the 737 Max family, do you feel comfortable flying on the plane?With more than 2,200 votes, it showed that 59. 4% of the participants spoke “Yes” again, to 40. 6% “No”.
At any given time, one or another of the world’s largest aerospace suppliers may face a challenge or technical mishap. The industry wants Airbus and Boeing to serve as well.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s six-week audit and a specialized panel’s report on Boeing’s safety screening formula suggest there are endemic disorders that cause production defects and discourage workers from talking about protection.
Boeing, on the other hand, has said all the right things. In a statement released in February, Boeing Chairman and CEO Dave Calhoun said:
“Through our quality testing, the findings of the FAA audit, and the recent report of the specialized review panel, we have a transparent concept of what we want to do. Transparency prevailed in all of those discussions. Boeing will expand a comprehensive action plan with measurable results. criteria that demonstrate the profound change demanded by Administrator Whitaker and the FAA. Our Boeing leadership team is fully committed to meeting this challenge.
The challenge for Boeing will be to make its workers feel confident that they are meeting the company’s stated safety and quality goals.
In an interview with NBC Nightly News’ Tonight, FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker told Lester Holt that Boeing has prioritized safety.
“Well, my impressions matched those of the cultural research that just ended at Boeing and our audit, which is that there are issues around the culture of safeguarding at Boeing,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker also said that the company’s production procedures were: “Not what you’d expect if protection was the first priority. Every time someone comes to the FAA to pitch their company, the first thing I look forward to is communicating about protection. Because we all have to start there. If it’s not safe, then the total formula doesn’t work as it should. “
At Airbus’ annual press conference in February, Faury explained how the company had beefed up its safety education program, adding that following the COVID production slowdown.
“We knew the need for recruitment for onboarding and education to gain qualifications and enjoy the industry as an exit threat from COVID. In fact, what we faced at the beginning was more critical: early ability to recruit was too equivalent to speed. ” Faury said.
“This is one of the explanations for the difficulties we encountered in 2022 in delivering our brands. That said, in the meantime, we’ve gotten organized.
Faury said the entire aviation industry is racing to locate and hire others with the right skills and qualifications, “at the risk of quality and protection. “
For its part, Airbus is prioritizing providing new employees with enough onboarding procedure to acquire technical and practical protection skills. “It’s not just about the work. It’s also about learning about all the regulatory frameworks and how we do business,” Faury said.
New hires receive support in the box through in-house “trainers,” who concentrate their skills while emphasizing protective practices.
The company has developed a protection promotion center implemented at its main sites to foster a protection-focused culture.
“It’s anything we take very seriously because it’s a risk,” Faury said, adding that mitigating similar hazards to quality and protection issues is getting “the full attention” of the company.
“We need to manage that threat as best we can,” he said. We are putting investment effort and professional people into it, seeking to do it well. But I must remain humble. Again, ensuring quality in any industry. “It’s a challenge.
Faury added that the most productive way to manage this threat is to anticipate disruption and quality.
“Ensuring protection is an absolute necessity for us and for our products,” he said.
News reports of maintenance events, some of which would otherwise be common, heighten passengers’ concerns about aviation safety.
United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby sent a message Monday assuring consumers that the airline is prioritizing safety, despite a series of recent incidents, adding a 737-800 that landed in Oregon on Friday with no signal.
“While they are unrelated, I want you to know that those incidents capture our attention and have sharpened our focus,” Kirby said.
The airline will offer an additional day of pilot education starting in May. It will also update the education program for new maintenance technicians and inspire workers to report protection issues.
As highlighted by the International Air Transport Association, 2023 will be one of the safest years ever recorded, with no fatalities or hull losses. This is despite the 37 million aircraft movements recorded in 2023, between aircraft and turboprops combined.
“Safety functionality in 2023 continues to prove that flying is the safest mode of transportation. Aviation places the highest priority on protection and this can be noticed in the functionality of 2023. There were no hull losses or fatalities in aircraft operations. The year 2023 was also marked by the lowest rate of death threat and twists of fate ever recorded. A single fatal turboprop twist of fate, which killed 72 people, is a reminder that we can never take protection for granted. And two high-profile twists of fate in “The First Month of 2024″ shows that while flying is one of the safest activities a user can do, there is room for improvement. That’s what we’ve done throughout our history. And we’re going to continue to make flights safer and safer,” Willie said. Walsh, IATA’s director general, in an article published in the association’s Airlines magazine.
Even with incidents in 2024, aviation is still safe. The important thing is that it stays that way.
Correction: This article has been updated with kind, correct words exchanged that inadvertently misrepresent what FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker told Lester Holt. Whitaker said Boeing had prioritized production over safety.