Boeing appears to be like to embed skilled pilots with new airline prospects

By Valerie Insinna

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Boeing (NYSE:) Co is deploying skilled pilots to airways which can be coaching their staff to fly Boeing plane, as a part of a wider push to cut back aviation security dangers after two 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019.

In 2022, a complete of 125 so-called “flight operations representatives” labored with greater than 60 airways, Boeing officers instructed reporters in throughout a media occasion in Washington.

“When there’s an operator that’s getting a brand new fleet kind, we ship them out,” mentioned Lacey Pittman, Boeing’s vp of its international aerospace security initiative. “What we’re at present doing is deploying the place there’s that want and a request.”

Boeing Chief Security Officer Mike Delaney mentioned that whereas it is as much as aviation regulators to make sure airways are able to function new plane sorts, having Boeing pilots on the bottom permits the corporate to handle practices that could be regarding.

“We have needed to make onerous suggestions to some airways, little question about that,” he mentioned. “All of them have accepted both our advice … and in some instances we’ve supplied extra assets from our firm to assist them do it.”

Whereas Boeing traditionally has despatched engineering and upkeep consultants to embed with airways, sending pilots on a semi-permanent foundation to reply questions on flight operations procedures is a brand new endeavor for the corporate.

Boeing hopes to recruit extra flight operations representatives – who’re largely former retired airline pilots with greater than 13,000 flight hours underneath their belt, Pittman mentioned.

Nevertheless, airways’ demand for coaching is excessive, and the older age of Boeing’s pool of current representatives results in pure challenges in recruiting and retaining a workforce.

“One problem is that pilots are a scare commodity,” Delaney mentioned. “That is going to be a steady (effort) making an attempt to maintain the pipeline full.”

Delaney and Pittman spoke to reporters throughout a media occasion tied to the roll out of Boeing’s second annual security report, required by a 2021 authorized settlement over the 737 MAX crashes which killed 346 folks.

Different initiatives highlighted by Boeing officers included a machine studying algorithm developed by the corporate and the Federal Aviation Administration, which scours “service problem experiences” that describes plane system malfunctions and identifies developments within the knowledge.