Boeing fined $6.6m for failing to comply on safety agreement

Bloomberg

Boeing Co has agreed to pay $6.6 million in penalties to US regulators after failing to comply with a 2015 agreement to improve its safety processes.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced the penalties in a press release. The company agreed to pay $5.4 million to settle earlier cases brought against the company and another $1.21 million for two more recent cases, the agency said.
“Boeing failed to meet all of its obligations under the settlement agreement, and the FAA is holding Boeing accountable by imposing additional penalties,” FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said. “I have reiterated to Boeing’s leadership time and again that the company must prioritise safety and regulatory compliance, and that the FAA will always put safety first in all its decisions.”
Boeing fell 5.6% to $216.45 at the close in New York, the biggest drop on the Dow Jones Industrial Average amid a broad rout in US stocks. The agreement comes only months after Boeing’s best-selling plane, the 737 Max, was ungrounded after a 20-month span that prompted lawmakers and others to denounce the company’s safety culture and led to billions of dollars in lost sales and other costs. During that time, the FAA withheld what had been routine authority for the company to perform such things as approvals of planes coming off the assembly line.
Boeing last month separately agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle a criminal case against it by the US Justice Department. The company was accused of defrauding the government by concealing information about the 737 Max. Some on Wall Street and in Congress said the penalty was light because most of it was money the company had already agreed to pay to airlines and accident victims’ families. Among the issues cited by FAA was “undue pressure” placed on Boeing employees who were deputised by the government to sign off on whether design changes met federal regulations. Those employees are supposed to act independently under FAA rules.
Boeing previously paid $12 million in civil penalties as an initial condition of the 2015 agreement. The company at that time settled 13 separate investigations underway by FAA. They ranged from issues that arose during the certification of new planes to alleged sloppiness in the company’s production facilities.
As part of that pact, the company agreed to improve its safety processes and prioritise complying with FAA regulations, FAA said. It agreed to more penalties if it failed to do so. Boeing failed to meet some of its “improvement targets” and “some company managers did not sufficiently prioritise compliance with FAA regulations,” it said.

Boeing 777 makes emergency landing over engine trouble
Bloomberg

A Boeing Co 777 aircraft operated by Rossiya Airlines made an emergency landing in Moscow because of engine trouble.
The incident with the Rossiya Air flight came less than a week after an aircraft of the same model flown by United Airlines Holdings Inc suffered a dramatic engine blowout over Denver, shedding debris onto neighborhoods below.
The Rossiya cargo jet is powered by General Electric Co turbines, according to fleet data from planespotters.net.