FAA RULING ENABLES PLANE TO TAKE ON ADDITIONAL ROUTES
Boeing’s much-maligned next generation passenger jet has been cleared for long distance travel by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Reuters is reporting.
The company’s 787 Dreamliner – grounded in January 2013 due to a series of unexplained conflagrations – is now able to embark on flight plans that take the plane more than five hours away from the nearest emergency landing location (i.e. over vast expanses of ocean). Previously the plane was required to stay within a three-hour range of the nearest emergency landing location – curbing its ability to travel over broad oceans.
“Granting of the expanded operational permission will allow airlines to introduce additional routes,” the company said in a statement.
Well good for Boeing … international routes are obviously key to the company considering U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing loan guarantees for foreign airlines that purchase Dreamliners.
Just don’t mention the routes domestic carriers are forced to give up owing to the unfair advantage these subsidies provide their foreign competitors …
Anyway, S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley and other status quo-supporting South Carolina politicians have bet big on Boeing and its Dreamliner – which has experienced all sorts of problems in the wake of its global grounding.
South Carolina’s plant has had its share of issues, too – as first reported by FITS last November.
We wish Boeing the best, but frankly the company’s reliance on government subsidies and incentives at all levels is one of the world’s worst cases of crony capitalism. And rest assured for every “winner” picked by government in the economic development game, there are plenty of losers (including taxpayers).
14 comments
Will, this has to be the first semi positive story you’ve written about Boeing in South Carolina.
And Boeing’s only competition in this market is? It would be Airbus. Who created Airbus? That would be the governments of Germany, France and the UK. Can you get more “crony” than that?
Boeing > Airbus end of discussion.
I would never get in that plastic plane with those batteries and fly over the ocean. No, no.
From 2000-2009, 26,678 people die in a car, SUV or light truck accident each year in the US. 74 people die in a commercial airplane in the a US each year. You are about 400 times more likely to die in car than a plane per passenger mile.
More specifically, how many have died in a Dreamliner as a direct result of a battery fire?
How many have died from drinking Hemlock?
LOL – you are cracking me up, EM!
The plastic, aka composite, part worries me at least as much as the batteries.
Plastic planes with lithium ion batteries over the ocean may change those number fast.
If God had wanted us to fly, we would have wings. That right?
The Import Export Bank enables US manufacturers to compete on an equal footing with foreign manufacturers that have similar financing from their governments. Even though the federal government does guarantee the loans, the Im – Ex Bank is required to and has operated at a profit even returning money to the Federal government.
While domestic carriers don’t approve of this financing of foreign carriers similar rates are available to them. Some even use the Im – Ex Bank to finance foreign maintenance facilities.
http://crankyflier.com/2014/04/08/why-the-us-export-import-bank-has-angered-the-us-airline-industry/
How many times have you been told that Sic Willie doesn’t want to hear facts that dispute his little stories. So stop already!
Just don’t let any union people around the Charleston-made planes.