By the Leeham News Team
Sept. 18, 2022, © Leeham News: LNA last week attended the US Chamber of Commerce’s Aerospace Summit in Washington (DC). We’ll have a 
series of full reports in the coming weeks. Here are things picked up on the sidelines.
Contents
Boeing
- The Federal Aviation Administration remains “pissed” at Boeing.
- Boeing CEO David Calhoun said certification of the 737 MAX 10 could come this year, but it might not. He expects certification of the MAX 7 to come this year.
- Separately, LNA is told that the MAX 10 probably won’t be certified until next summer, and certification of the MAX 7 could come as early as next month.
- Calhoun said that Boeing is now pausing the 737 production line when parts don’t come in from suppliers. Doing so prevents traveled work. “We’re going to stay here until these lines move. Steadily, steadily, steadily when we’re not getting defects and we’re not getting shortages.”
- Calhoun said the stored airplanes aren’t facing shortages. But getting them delivered is a matter of going through the “conformance” steps. “They sat for a couple of years. There were a lot of deferred actions that were incorporated into the new certification. Every one of those actions must be taken on these return-to-service airplanes. It requires almost as many hours to do that as it did to build one in the first place.”
- Boeing is probably going to be frozen out of China for one-two years, principally in retaliation for the visits by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a Congressional committee as well as defense product sales to Taiwan.
ecoAviation
- Air Canada and United Airlines promoted their ecoAviation plans with, among other things, orders for the Heart Aviation electric hybrid airplane. Heart abandoned its 19-seat version in favor of a 30-seat model, the ES-30. Air Canada announced an order for 30 the day of the commercial portion of the Chamber’s conference. Air Canada also invested $5m in Heart, it was also announced. United last year placed an order for 100 ES-19s.
- But neither airline addressed the total life cycle elements of an electric or hybrid airplane. Making, charging, and disposing of batteries is ecologically challenging and offsets some of the gains of the concept.
Return of the conference
This was the first Chamber aviation conference since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. About 800 people attended. The first day focused on the emerging commercialization of the space market. The second day focused on commercial aviation.
Unfortunately, the agenda did not provide questions and answers following the presentations. This is a major omission.United CEO Scott Kirby fled (or was whisked away) when reporters met him as he left the stage, avoiding questions. So did others, while some speakers engaged with the press. But the audience had do chance to follow up presentations.
Hopefully, this will be included next week.