organization:federal aviation administration

  • Le Boeing 737 Max risque de rester cloué au sol pendant un an
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/07/02/le-boeing-737-max-risque-de-rester-cloue-au-sol-pendant-un-an_5484468_3210.h

    […] A l’occasion du Salon international de l’aéronautique et de l’espace, qui s’est achevé le 23 juin au Bourget, Boeing avait laissé entendre à ses principaux fournisseurs que la certification de l’appareil était en bonne voie. Il entrevoyait alors un retour en vol du Max dès le début août. Ce calendrier optimiste ne tient plus.

    Fin juin, l’Agence fédérale américaine de l’aviation (FAA) a découvert, à l’occasion de tests poussés sur simulateur, une nouvelle anomalie dans une carte contrôleur, un matériel informatique qui sert à ajouter des fonctionnalités. Une véritable tuile pour Boeing, car cet élément entre dans l’activation « du système de stabilisation de l’avion », précise le cabinet ACS. Le dispositif informatique MCAS, qui sert à stabiliser l’avion, notamment dans sa phase de décollage, est mis en cause dans l’incident et dans le crash de Lion Air du 28 et du 29 octobre 2018, puis dans celui d’Ethiopian Airways, en mars 2019.
    […]
    Pour Archery Strategy Consulting, le calendrier « très optimiste » qui prévoyait « une reprise des vols d’ici à la fin de l’année » ne tient pas. Notamment à cause de la pénurie de simulateurs. Selon les décomptes, il n’y en aurait que sept de par le monde intégralement dédiés au Max ou qui intègrent les spécifications du nouveau moyen-courrier de Boeing. Trois mois et demi après la décision d’immobiliser le Max, 370 exemplaires de l’appareil ont été livrés à des compagnies aériennes clientes, tandis que 170 sont stockés sur des parkings par l’avionneur. A raison de dix pilotes, en moyenne, par appareil, précise ACS, il faudra, au bas mot, « douze semaines pour former les 4 000 pilotes », sur les rares simulateurs de vol en service.

  • L’agence fédérale de l’aviation américaine a décelé une nouvelle faille « potentielle » du 737 MAX
    https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/06/26/l-agence-federale-de-l-aviation-americaine-a-decele-une-nouvelle-faille-pote

    L’avionneur Boeing va devoir réparer cette faille, qui est de nature à retarder l’essai en vol du 737 MAX modifié, nécessaire pour la re-certification de l’appareil.

    Le retour dans le ciel du Boeing 737 Max va devoir être reporté. L’agence fédérale de l’aviation américaine (FAA) a décelé une nouvelle faille « potentielle », a-t-elle annoncé mercredi 26 juin. Le régulateur demande à l’avionneur de réparer cette dernière, qui est de nature à retarder l’essai en vol de l’appareil modifié, test nécessaire pour la re-certification de l’avion, locomotive des ventes du constructeur et cloué au sol depuis mi-mars.

    Dans un document adressé au gendarme des marchés, la SEC, l’avionneur explique que la FAA lui a demandé de « s’occuper d’un problème spécifique en vol que les changements de logiciel du 737 MAX sur lesquels Boeing travaille depuis huit mois ne prennent pas en compte ».

    « Boeing est d’accord avec la décision et la requête de la FAA et est en train de travailler sur ledit logiciel afin de répondre à la demande » de l’autorité, ajoute le groupe de Chicago. Il ajoute qu’il ne soumettra pas le 737 MAX modifié pour certification « tant que nous n’aurons pas satisfait toutes les exigences (…) pour un retour en service en toute sécurité ».

    Selon une source proche du dossier ayant requis l’anonymat, lors des tests sur simulateur la semaine dernière, des pilotes de la FAA ont eu du mal à reprendre le contrôle de l’avion après avoir activé le système anti-décrochage MCAS, mis en cause dans l’accident de Lion Air en Indonésie en 2018 et celui d’Ethiopian Airlines en mars en Ethiopie.

    Le vol test nécessaire pour enclencher le calendrier de retour dans le ciel du 737 MAX aux Etats-Unis ne pourra donc pas être effectué avant le 8 juillet, a commenté à l’Agence France-Presse (AFP) une source gouvernementale.

    Il va falloir à la FAA au moins de deux à trois semaines pour examiner les modifications effectuées par Boeing pour régler le problème, a dit cette source. En outre, il est difficile de savoir pour l’instant si le colmatage de cette faille exige une simple mise à jour du logiciel ou des changements en profondeur. Dans ce dernier cas, le 737 MAX devrait rester immobilisé au sol pendant encore de longues semaines.

  • Donald Trump annule au dernier moment des frappes militaires sur l’Iran
    https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/06/21/trump-annule-au-dernier-moment-des-frappes-sur-l-iran_5479488_3210.html

    Au lendemain de l’attaque d’un drone américain, le président américain a approuvé une opération militaire avant de se raviser, selon le « New York Times ».

    Le président américain Donald Trump qui poursuit sa politique de « pression maximum » sur l’Iran. Il a approuvé une opération militaire devant cibler des installations iraniennes, vendredi, avant de se raviser et d’annuler les frappes au dernier moment, écrit le New York Times, vendredi 21 juin. Le quotidien cite des représentants de l’administration américaine ayant pris part ou étant informés des discussions.

    D’après le journal, le président américain a validé une offensive contre un éventail de cibles iraniennes, telles que des radars ou des batteries de missiles, puis s’est ravisé alors que les avions de chasse avaient décollé et les navires de guerre s’étaient mis en position.

    Aucun missile n’a été tiré, avant que l’opération ne soit annulée, à 19 h 30, heure de Washington (1 h 30 du matin, à Paris), a déclaré un membre de l’administration, cité par le journal. La Maison Blanche et le Pentagone ont refusé de commenter l’information.
    Le New York Times ajoute ne pas savoir à l’heure actuelle si une offensive américaine contre l’Iran est toujours programmée, indiquant ne pas avoir établi si Donald Trump avait changé d’avis ou si le revirement était dû à des interrogations stratégiques ou logistiques.

    Les craintes de confrontation directe entre Washington et Téhéran ont été ravivées jeudi après que l’Iran a abattu un drone RQ-4 Global Hawk américain se trouvant selon lui dans son espace aérien, près du détroit d’Ormuz, ce que contestent les Etats-Unis.
    L’Iran affirme disposer de preuves « irréfutables » montrant que le drone américain a abattu jeudi était entré dans son espace aérien. « Des débris du drone ont même été retrouvés dans les eaux territoriales de l’Iran », a maintenu le ministre des affaires étrangères adjoint Abbas Araghchi lors d’une discussion avec l’ambassadeur de Suisse à Téhéran, qui représente les intérêts américains.

  • Boeing : défauts de fabrication sur des guides de becs de bord d’attaque susceptibles d’usure prématurée. Le sous-traitant n’aurait pas appliqué un traitement thermique.

    Boeing reports faulty parts on 737 wings, including MAX
    https://www.aerotime.aero/clement.charpentreau/22712-boeing-reports-faulty-parts-on-737-wings-including-max

    The FAA published a notice warning of defective parts on the wings of around 300 Boeing 737 MAX and 737 NG. The manufacturer requests operators to change the parts.

    An undisclosed subcontractor has informed Boeing that a batch of leading-edge slat tracks was improperly manufactured and could present signs of early wear due to the lack of heat treatment.

    The affected parts may be susceptible to premature failure or cracks resulting from the improper manufacturing process,” said the FAA. This could prove particularly dangerous, especially during take-off or landing as, an asymmetry in the extension of the slats could create a lift differential. However, the FAA said that such failure would not lead to the loss of the aircraft.

    Boeing calls operators to replace the parts with new ones before returning aircraft to service. The change of parts should require one or two days, according to the manufacturer.

    While Boeing estimates that only twenty 737 MAX and twenty-one 21 737 NG are concerned, it advised the airlines to control 179 additional MAX aircraft and 133 NG to determine if their parts were also defective. The serial numbers of the affected parts have been communicated to the airlines. “_Boeing is now staging replacement parts at customer bases to help minimize […?]

    Leading-edge slat - Wikipedia
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading-edge_slat


    The position of the leading-edge slats on an airliner (Airbus A310-300). In this picture, the slats are drooped. Note also the extended trailing-edge flaps.
    Adrian Pingstone, released to the public domain

  • Boeing Built Deadly Assumptions Into 737 Max, Blind to a Late Design Change - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190602

    A year before the plane was finished, Boeing made the system more aggressive and riskier. While the original version relied on data from at least two types of sensors, the ultimate used just one, leaving the system without a critical safeguard. In both doomed flights, pilots struggled as a single damaged sensor sent the planes into irrecoverable nose-dives within minutes, killing 346 people and prompting regulators around the world to ground the Max.

    But many people involved in building, testing and approving the system, known as MCAS, said they hadn’t fully understood the changes. Current and former employees at Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration who spoke with The New York Times said they had assumed the system relied on more sensors and would rarely, if ever, activate. Based on those misguided assumptions, many made critical decisions, affecting design, certification and training.

    Au fond, ne s’agit-il pas de l’application à des outils « physiques » des préceptes et méthodes de l’industrie « immatérielle » ? Une idéologie de l’erreur/bug impossible, de la rapidité de mise sur le marché, de l’absence de réelle documentation, notamment d’une documentation qui ne dit pas « comment ça marche », mais « comment c’est conçu et pourquoi ».

    While prosecutors and lawmakers try to piece together what went wrong, the current and former employees point to the single, fateful decision to change the system, which led to a series of design mistakes and regulatory oversights. As Boeing rushed to get the plane done, many of the employees say, they didn’t recognize the importance of the decision. They described a compartmentalized approach, each of them focusing on a small part of the plane. The process left them without a complete view of a critical and ultimately dangerous system.

    The company also played down the scope of the system to regulators. Boeing never disclosed the revamp of MCAS to Federal Aviation Administration officials involved in determining pilot training needs, according to three agency officials. When Boeing asked to remove the description of the system from the pilot’s manual, the F.A.A. agreed. As a result, most Max pilots did not know about the software until after the first crash, in October.

    L’informatique magique dans toute sa splendeur

    But the plane wasn’t flying smoothly, partly because of the Max’s bigger engines. To fix the issue, Boeing decided to use a piece of software. The system was meant to work in the background, so pilots effectively wouldn’t know it was there.

    That probability may have underestimated the risk of so-called external events that have damaged sensors in the past, such as collisions with birds, bumps from ramp stairs or mechanics’ stepping on them. While part of the assessment considers such incidents, they are not included in the probability. Investigators suspect the angle-of-attack sensor was hit on the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight in March.

    Bird strikes on angle-of-attack sensors are relatively common.

    A Times review of two F.A.A. databases found hundreds of reports of bent, cracked, sheared-off, poorly installed or otherwise malfunctioning angle-of-attack sensors on commercial aircraft over three decades.

    #Boeing #Sécurité #Ingénierie #Capitalisme_de_catastrophe

    • Concrètement, il s’agit d’une fraude délibérée : en aviation, tu as une obligation (facile à comprendre) de redondance des systèmes. En gros, un seul capteur, c’est criminel.
      Ce n’est pas la première fois du tout que Boeing se fait gauler pour une fraude délibérée à la sécurité de ses avions, en plus, pour une économie de bout de chandelle.

      Il y a avait eu le coup des fermetures de soutes, avec une pièce trop fragile qui cassait en altitude, ouvrait la soute et engendrait une dépressurisation explosive. Dès le premier accident, Boeing avait identifié le problème, mais ils avaient calculé que ça leur coûterait moins cher de ne rien faire et de prendre le risque que ce soit découvert plutôt que de devoir rappeler toutes les flottes en service.

      Calcul cynique avec la vie des passagers et membres d’équipage des clients. Calcul raté parce qu’une famille s’est acharnée, a trouvé une gorge profonde et a obtenu la preuve du crime délibéré du constructeur.

      Pourtant, malgré les dommages et intérêts colossaux, les preuves du processus décisionnel qui accorde plus d’intérêt au profit qu’aux vies des clients, Boeing a continué à vendre.

      On dirait plus une mafia qu’une compagnie.

  • Réunion cruciale pour Boeing autour des déboires du 737 MAX
    https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/05/23/reunion-cruciale-pour-boeing-autour-des-deboires-du-737-max_5465909_3234.htm


    Les avions 737 MAX de la compagnie américaine Southwest Airlines immobilisés sur le tarmac de l’aéroport de Victorville, en Californie, le 28 mars 2019.
    MARK RALSTON / AFP

    Les régulateurs de l’aviation de 34 pays doivent se réunir jeudi à propos du modèle critiqué de la compagnie américaine. Celui-ci est immobilisé depuis 71 jours après le crash de deux avions.

    L’attente vis-à-vis du 737 MAX va-t-elle se prolonger encore longtemps pour la compagnie Boeing ? Cela fait déjà 71 jours que ce modèle de l’avionneur est immobilsé après les catastrophes aériennes d’Ethiopian et de Lion Air, qui ont fait 346 morts. La réunion cruciale entre l’Administration fédérale de l’aviation américaine (FAA) et des régulateurs venant de trente-trois pays qui se tient jeudi 23 mai à Fort Worth (Texas) pourrait justement donner une idée un peu plus précise sur le retour en service du 737 MAX.

    Cette réunion à huis clos, qui débutera à 9 heures (heure locale) – soit 16 heures à Paris –, doit durer toute la journée. Elle devrait fournir des indices sur les intentions et le degré de confiance que les autres autorités de l’aviation civile portent encore à Boeing ainsi qu’à la FAA. Ni Boeing ni les compagnies aériennes n’ont été conviés à cette réunion à l’issue de laquelle aucune déclaration commune n’est prévue, seulement une conférence de presse en fin d’après-midi.

    Le système antidécrochage MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System) devait être au centre des discussions puisque c’est lui qui a été mis en cause dans le crash d’un avion de la compagnie Ethiopian Airlines en mars, qui a coûté la vie à 157 personnes, et dans la catastrophe de Lion Air en Indonésie fin octobre 2018, au cours de laquelle 189 personnes ont péri. Au mois de mars, la compagnie Boeing avait effectué une mise à jour logicielle du système MCAS du 737 Max.

    Mais les autorités américaines ont d’ores et déjà annoncé mercredi que Boeing n’avait pas encore formellement soumis le correctif du 737 MAX pour certification. Cette annonce intervient alors que Boeing avait affirmé la semaine dernière avoir finalisé les changements exigés par l’agence américaine et que le correctif était prêt pour certification.

    Aussi, la formation finale des pilotes n’a pas encore été déterminée. Les autorités américaines estiment qu’une formation sur ordinateur ou iPad serait suffisante pour des pilotes expérimentés, alors que le régulateur canadien réclame un passage obligé sur simulateur qui a l’avantage de reproduire les conditions de vol.

    Au vu du retard pris par Boeing, il est difficile, selon M. Elwell, de déterminer quand interviendra la levée de l’interdiction de vol. « Je ne suis attaché à aucun calendrier », a fait savoir Dan Elwell, chef intérimaire de la FAA, qui a refusé de s’aligner sur American Airlines et Southwest, deux compagnies clientes du 737 MAX, qui ont annulé les vols programmés pour cet avion jusqu’à la mi-août dans l’espoir que l’interdiction de vol serait levée d’ici à juillet au plus tard.

    « Ça prendra le temps qu’il faudra pour faire les choses comme il se doit », a-t-il assuré, soulignant toutefois qu’en tant qu’autorité d’origine du 737 MAX, la FAA « doit être le premier régulateur » à l’autoriser à voler à nouveau. Jusqu’aux déboires du 737 MAX, avait toujours prévalu un système de réciprocité qui voulait que les autres régulateurs s’en remissent à la certification de l’autorité d’origine. « Il y a de la méfiance vis-à-vis de la FAA et de Boeing et les informations distillées au compte-gouttes sur ce que Boeing savait (…) sont fâcheuses », avance Scott Hamilton, expert chez Leeham.

    Des responsables des autorités de l’aviation de l’Union européenne et du Canada ont expliqué qu’il n’était pas question de faire redécoller le 737 MAX chez eux tant que des questions resteront en suspens. « Il y a des conditions au retour en vol (du 737 MAX) et pour nous c’est que nous procédions à une évaluation indépendante », a fait savoir Jagello Fayl, responsable de la communication de l’agence européenne EASA.

    • Les Boeing 737 MAX interdits de vol pour une durée indéterminée
      https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/05/24/les-boeing-737-max-toujours-cloues-au-sol-pour-une-duree-indeterminee_546629


      Les avions 737 MAX de la compagnie American Airlines immobilisés à Tulsa dans l’Oklahoma, le 10 mai.
      HANDOUT / REUTERS

      Aucune date de remise en service de l’avion n’a été décidée à l’issue d’une longue réunion entre les différentes autorités mondiales de l’aviation civile.

      Immobilisé à travers le monde depuis le 13 mars, le Boeing 737 MAX risque encore d’attendre plusieurs mois avant de pouvoir reprendre son envol. Les autorités mondiales de l’aviation civile, réunies jeudi 23 mai au Texas, se sont séparées après huit heures de discussions sans date de retour en service de l’avion-phare de la compagnie américaine.

      « Le seul calendrier est de s’assurer que l’avion est sûr avant de voler », a déclaré Dan Elwell, chef intérimaire de l’Agence fédérale américaine de l’aviation (FAA), lors d’une conférence de presse. Cette incertitude traduit la méfiance des autres régulateurs envers la FAA, à laquelle ils ont posé « beaucoup de questions » et dont ils voulaient des « clarifications » sur les procédures. M. Elwell a indirectement reconnu l’absence de consensus en déclarant que « chaque pays prendra[it] sa propre décision », en toute indépendance, même si le « dialogue » va se poursuivre, notamment avec des échanges d’informations.
      […]
      Dan Elwell avait jeté un froid mercredi en révélant que Boeing n’avait pas soumis pour évaluation la mise à jour du système antidécrochage MCAS, en raison de questions additionnelles. C’est le dysfonctionnement de ce dispositif, mis en cause dans les accidents d’Ethiopian Airlines, le 10 mars (157 morts), et de Lion Air, le 29 octobre en Indonésie (189 morts), qui a entraîné l’interdiction provisoire de vol du 737 MAX, dernier-né du constructeur américain. L’avionneur avait pourtant affirmé la semaine dernière que le correctif était prêt pour la certification.
      […]
      Au-delà du problème de réputation, la crise du 737 MAX devrait avoir un coût financier important alors que cet avion représentait près de 80 % du carnet de commandes de Boeing à la fin d’avril. Le constructeur, qui a suspendu les livraisons, ne perçoit plus d’argent des compagnies aériennes, qu’il devra aussi indemniser pour leur manque à gagner.

  • Boeing : « Un régulateur cloué au sol »
    https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2019/05/16/boeing-un-regulateur-cloue-au-sol_5462813_3234.html


    Des parents de victimes du crash du Boeing 737 d’Ethiopian Airlines à la Chambre des représentants lors d’une audition sur les crashes de l’avionneur, mercredi 15 mai, à Washington.
    NICHOLAS KAMM / AFP

    La responsabilité de l’Administration fédérale de l’aviation est pointée du doigt dans la catastrophe des 737 Max. Ressurgit le vieux débat de la #capture_du_régulateur par les industriels qu’il surveille, analyse l’éditorialiste économique du « Monde », Philippe Escande.

    Pertes et profits. Etrange ballet, mercredi 15 mai, sur la colline du Capitole à Washington. Les deux chambres du parlement américain parlaient avions. Dans les salles du Sénat, on procédait à l’audition de Stephen Dickson, le futur patron de l’Administration fédérale de l’aviation (FAA). Non loin de là, du côté de la Chambre des représentants, on a tenté, avec témoins et victimes, de refaire le film des événements qui ont conduit aux crashs successifs, à trois mois d’intervalle, d’un #Boeing_737_Max de la compagnie indonésienne Lion Air et d’un appareil équivalent d’Ethiopian Airlines. Bilan de ces deux catastrophes : 346 morts, 350 avions cloués au sol dans le monde, un effondrement des commandes de Boeing et des pertes en cascade dans tout le secteur mondial du transport aérien et du tourisme.

    Deux sujets majeurs sont soulevés. Le premier, très concret, est la responsabilité de Boeing, averti dès novembre 2018 par des pilotes d’Americain Airlines d’une défaillance du logiciel de pilotage de l’avion et qui n’avait toujours pas corrigé l’anomalie trois mois après quand l’avion éthiopien s’est écrasé. Le deuxième est celui de la responsabilité de l’instance de régulation, la FAA. Dina Titus, élue démocrate du Nevada, a résumé la situation. « Le public pense que vous étiez au lit avec ceux que vous étiez censé surveiller et que c’est pour cela que l’interdiction des vols de 737 Max a été si longue à venir », a-t-elle lancé à Daniel Elwel, l’actuel directeur de la FAA. La presse américaine a notamment révélé que les examens de certification étaient sous-traités à l’entreprise elle-même…

    Cette affaire soulève à nouveau la question d’un phénomène que les économistes connaissent bien et qu’ils appellent la capture du régulateur. Celle-ci est de deux ordres. D’abord matérielle, quand l’agence de surveillance manque de moyens face à des entreprises bien plus riches. Dans le cas de Boeing, Daniel Elwel a révélé que si la FAA devait faire les analyses demandées à l’avionneur, cela lui coûterait 1,8 milliard de dollars (1,6 milliard d’euros)

    #paywall

  • Le Département des transports états-uniens suspend tous les vols, passagers ou fret, de et vers le #Venezuela.

    Estados Unidos suspendió todos los vuelos desde y hacia Venezuela
    http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/mundo/estados-unidos-suspendio-todos-los-vuelos-desde-hacia-venezuela_282393

    El Departamento de Transporte de Estados Unidos informó este martes la suspensión de todos los vuelos desde y hacia Venezuela debido a la crisis que padece el país. 

    En el texto explica que en el territorio nacional existe una amenaza a la seguridad de los pasajeros, aeronaves y tripulaciones que viajan desde un aeropuerto extranjero hasta Venezuela o desde este país hacia destinos foráneos. 

    La publicación, autorizada por Kevin McAleenan, secretario interino de la seguridad nacional de Estados Unidos, recomienda a los ciudadanos no viajar al país luego de la suspensión de las operaciones de su embajada. Los inspectores de la Administración de Seguridad del Transporte (TSA) advierten que no viajen al territorio debido a las preocupaciones de seguridad. 

    El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) sostiene que debido a los factores que afectan al país se requiere una suspensión inmediata de todos los vuelos comerciales de pasajeros y de carga entre Estados Unidos y Venezuela.

    • Departamento de Transporte de EEUU suspende todos los vuelos desde y hacia Venezuela | United States Department Of Homeland Security (158K views)
      https://www.scribd.com/document/410164633/Departamento-de-Transporte-de-EEUU-suspende-todos-los-vuelos-desde-y-hacia-V

      Acting Secretary McAleenan has based his conclusion on a number of factors including:
      (1) reports of civil unrest and violence in and around the airports;
      (2) the inability of TSA to gain access to Venezuelan airports to conduct required security assessments to ensure that adequate security measures are in place;
      (3) the current economic and political crisis in Venezuela;
      (4) cancellation of flights to the country by American Airlines, the largest air carrier providing service, and two other carriers;
      (5) the U.S. Department of State’s publication of Do Not Travel advisories, suspension of Embassy operations, and recommendation that Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inspectors not enter the country owing to safety concerns;
      (6) the Federal Aviation Administration’s issuance of a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) on May 1, 2019, which prohibits all flight operations by U.S. air carriers and commercial operators in Venezuela airspace below FL 260; and
      (7) the risk of Maduro regime actions against Americans and American interests located in Venezuela.

      Based on these findings regarding current conditions in Venezuela by DHS, I agree that the public interest requires an immediate suspension of foreign air transportation between the United States and Venezuelan airports.

    • Venezuela : les sanctions, c’est bien, mais y a des limites ! Quand ça nous embête, c’est pas bien ! [l’opposition vénézuélienne en exil aux É.-U.]

      Veppex pidió a Trump reactivar vuelos de EE UU a Caracas
      http://www.el-nacional.com/noticias/mundo/veppex-pidio-trump-reactivar-vuelos-caracas_282661

      Grupos del exilio venezolano pidieron este viernes al presidente Donald Trump reactivar los vuelos de Estados Unidos a Venezuela, al señalar que la suspensión ha afectado a la gente común y ha dejado varados a decenas de pasajeros en aeropuertos.

      Los grupos Venezolanos Perseguidos Políticos en el Exilio (Veppex) y Madres Venezolanas en el Exterior (Amavex) señalaron en rueda de prensa que aprueban las medidas de presión «para aislar al régimen de Nicolás Maduro», pero que se debe «corregir» la suspensión de los vuelos.

      La activista Helene Villalonga, de Amavex, hizo un llamado de atención al gobierno de Trump por esa medida, al subrayar que ha afectado no a los funcionarios, como se podría pensar en principio, sino al venezolano común. Además, dijo a Efe que los venezolanos varados en el aeropuerto de Miami no han tenido respuesta a sus reclamos por parte de las aerolíneas, que solo les ofrecen llevarlos a un tercer país.

  • Déjà en 2018, les Boeing 737 MAX avaient failli être cloués au sol
    https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/deja-en-2018-les-boeing-737-max-avaient-failli-etre-cloues-au-sol-815596.h


    Crédits : Matt McKnight

    Des inspecteurs américains ont envisagé de clouer au sol l’an dernier une partie des Boeing 737 MAX, après avoir appris que l’avionneur avait désactivé le signal d’alerte censé avertir des dysfonctionnements du système antidécrochage MCAS, a déclaré dimanche à l’AFP une source proche du dossier.

    Les employés de l’agence fédérale de l’aviation (FAA) étaient chargés de superviser et de contrôler la compagnie aérienne Southwest Airlines, la plus grosse cliente du 737 MAX, avec une flotte de 34 appareils en service à l’époque. Ils avaient émis l’hypothèse d’une immobilisation des avions pour se donner le temps de déterminer si les pilotes avaient besoin ou pas d’une formation supplémentaire, a dit cette source sous couvert d’anonymat.

    Après des discussions, ils avaient finalement abandonné cette piste, mais l’information n’était pas remontée jusqu’aux hauts responsables de l’agence fédérale, a encore fait savoir cette source, confirmant des informations du Wall Street Journal.

    Les inspecteurs avaient découvert que Boeing avait choisi de rendre optionnel et payant le signal d’alerte lumineux après que Southwest eut demandé au constructeur de le réactiver à la suite de l’accident d’un 737 MAX 8 de Lion Air ayant entraîné la mort de 189 personnes le 29 octobre dernier en Indonésie.

    Boeing avait désactivé automatiquement ce signal dans les 737 MAX livrés à Southwest sans en informer la compagnie aérienne. Ni celle-ci ni ses pilotes n’étaient au courant des modifications lorsqu’ils ont commencé à faire voler l’avion en 2017, a expliqué à l’AFP une porte-parole de Southwest.

    Comme les régulateurs, ils n’ont été mis au courant qu’après le drame de Lion Air.

  • Crash du Boeing d’Ethiopian Airlines : les actions des pilotes révélées par la presse US (Sputnik)
    https://www.crashdebug.fr/international/15869-crash-du-boeing-d-ethiopian-airlines-les-actions-des-pilotes-revele

    J’espère qu’ils vont prendre cher Boeing..... Car ils savaient depuis fin 2018 que leur système était défaillant pourtant ils ont laissé voler les avions, du reste leur modification du fameux MCAS a été rejetée par la FAA.

    Selon les dernières informations fournies par The Wall Street Journal, les pilotes du Boeing qui s’est écrasé le mois dernier, ont respecté la procédure d’urgence établie par le constructeur. Les données tirées de la boîte noire de l’avion remettent en cause les affirmations de la société selon lesquelles le crash aurait pu être évité.

    Les pilotes du Boeing 737 MAX d’Ethiopian Airlines, qui s’est écrasé le 10 mars dernier peu après son décollage d’Addis Abeba, ont suivi les procédures d’urgence établies par Boeing sans parvenir à reprendre le contrôle de (...)

    #En_vedette #Actualités_internationales #Actualités_Internationales

  • How Public-Private Partnerships Are Killing Us - WhoWhatWhy
    https://whowhatwhy.org/2019/03/22/how-public-private-partnerships-are-killing-us

    The FAA’s decision allowing Boeing to do its own safety assessments — while the company president told President Trump that all was fine with the 737 Max — raises serious questions about the effectiveness of regulatory agencies charged with protecting our health and safety.

    In another critical public health area, the government has virtually partnered with the pharmaceutical industry to deal with the opioid crisis. It’s a lot like asking the arsonist to help put out the fire he started.

    According to Jonathan H. Marks, a bioethicist at the Penn State University, and our guest on this week’s WhoWhatWhy podcast, this is a troubling and dangerous trend that’s become more pronounced in recent years.

    He reminds us of how and why the government was so slow to respond to the faulty ignition switches in many GM cars, why exploding gas tanks went unrepaired, why tobacco deaths went unchecked for so long, and why government fails to take climate change seriously.

    The reason in each case: The government’s regulatory agencies felt the need to work with business in public-private partnerships. This has cost the lives of thousands.

    Marks says much of this was based on the misguided idea that we needed less conflict between the public and private sectors, and that by working together, more could be accomplished. Marks contends nothing could be further from the truth.

    #partenariat_public_privé #danger

  • Boeing 737 MAX : la modification du système anti-décrochage sera-t-elle suffisante pour une reprise des vols ?
    https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/boeing-737-max-la-modification-du-systeme-anti-decrochage-sera-t-elle-suff


    Crédits : Photo Boeing, infographie "La Tribune"

    Parmi les modifications apportées, le MCAS ne s’activera plus en cas de différence de mesures notable (5,5 degrés ou plus) entre les deux sondes d’incidence AOA (Angle of Attack). Les sondes envoient en effet des informations de vitesse et d’incidence. Par ailleurs, le MCAS ne s’activera qu’une fois en cas de configuration de vol anormale et jamais avec plus de force que les pilotes ne peuvent en exercer sur leurs commandes pour redresser l’appareil. Ils auront toujours la possibilité de contourner le système et de reprendre le contrôle manuel de l’avion.

    Tout en rejetant l’idée que ces modifications suggèrent que la conception de départ était inadaptée, Boeing juge quelles vont rendre le système « plus solide ». Elles seront présentées d’ici à la fin de la semaine à la direction de l’aviation civile américaine, la Federal Administration Agency (FAA).

    Auditionné mercredi par les sénateurs américains, Dan Elwell, responsable par intérim de la FAA, a tenté pour sa part de convaincre que la FAA avait fait son travail.

    L’intervention du MCAS sera plus transparente pour l’équipage, et les pilotes pourront plus facilement le contourner en cas de problème, a expliqué Boeing. Selon le constructeur, la nouvelle version du logiciel a été soumise « à des centaines d’heures d’analyses, de tests en laboratoire, de vérifications dans un simulateur de vol et à deux vols d’essais, y compris un vol de certification avec des représentants de la FAA à bord comme observateurs ». Le but est de « réduire la charge de travail de l’équipage dans des situations anormales et d’empêcher le MCAS de s’activer à cause de fausses données », a précisé Boeing. L’avionneur a aussi prévu de mieux former les pilotes aux subtilités du MCAS et du 737 MAX. En outre, la FAA et d’autres autorités de régulation doivent encore certifier ces modifications, a-t-il précisé.

  • Boeing a corrigé son système anti-décrochage MCAS du 737 MAX
    https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/boeing-a-corrige-son-systeme-anti-decrochage-mcas-du-737-max-811810.html


    Reuters

    Le constructeur américain indique avoir mis au point le correctif du système anti-décrochage mis en cause dans les accidents du 737 MAX, qu’il a présenté à certains de ses clients samedi. L’enjeu est de pouvoir permettre à nouveau le vol de ces modèles cloués au sol, ce dont pâtit la réputation de Boeing.
    […]
    La FAA avait donné au plus tard au mois d’avril à Boeing pour effectuer les changements nécessaires sur [le MCAS,] système essentiel pour protéger l’appareil, et des sources industrielles avaient indiqué à l’AFP que le correctif devait être prêt dans une dizaine de jours. Outre le correctif du MCAS, Boeing a également fini d’actualiser les manuels de bord et de formation des pilotes, comme le lui avait demandé la FAA, ont dit ces sources.

    Boeing va s’occuper de la formation des pilotes et est en train d’en organiser le calendrier avec les différentes compagnies aériennes clientes du 737 MAX, a assuré l’entreprise. Les coûts de cette formation et la facture du développement du correctif du logiciel MCAS seront à la charge du constructeur aéronautique, a-t-elle encore dit.

    Autre modification importante du 737 MAX : Boeing a décidé d’assortir désormais tous les appareils d’un signal lumineux d’alerte, une fonctionnalité qui était jusqu’ici optionnelle et payante, avait indiqué jeudi une source industrielle. Appelé « disagree light », ce signal d’alerte s’enclenche en cas d’informations erronées transmises par une ou deux sondes d’incidence ("Angle of attack", AOA) au système MCAS, qui mesure l’angle d’attaque. Ce dernier met l’avion en piqué pour lui permettre de reprendre de la vitesse et de l’éloigner du risque de décrochage fatal. Ni le 737 MAX 8 de Lion Air ni celui d’Ethiopian Airlines n’en étaient équipés, affirme une source industrielle.

    Et pas besoin de passer par la (longue…) étape de certification, puisque l’avion n’a pas perdu son certificat de navigabilité…

  • Garuda annule une commande de 49 Boeing 737 MAX
    https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/boeing-tente-de-rassurer-apres-les-deconvenues-du-b-737-max-8-811658.html


    (Reuters)

    Alors que la compagnie indonésienne Garuda a annoncé, ce vendredi 22 mars, renoncer à une commande de 49 Boeing 737 MAX 8 après deux crashs impliquant ce modèle en cinq mois, l’avionneur américain réagit afin de répondre aux inquiétudes ainsi que pour éviter que cette première annulation de contrat n’en appelle d’autres.

    C’est assurément un coup dur pour l’image de marque de Boeing. La compagnie indonésienne Garuda a annoncé, ce vendredi 22 mars, renoncer à une commande de 49 Boeing 737 MAX 8. Une première annulation de contrat pour le constructeur américain qui pourrait en appeler d’autres tant son crédit auprès de ses clients semble s’être érodé après deux crashs impliquant, en cinq mois, le Boeing 737 MAX 8.

    « Nous avons envoyé une lettre à Boeing demandant l’annulation de la commande », « les passagers de Garuda ont perdu confiance » dans le 737 MAX et ne veulent pas voler sur cet avion, a déclaré à l’AFP Ikhsan Rosan, porte-parole de la compagnie indonésienne. Il a précisé que Garuda avait déjà reçu un des 50 Boeing 737 MAX 8 commandés pour une valeur totale de 4,9 milliards de dollars au prix catalogue datant de l’annonce de la commande en 2014.

    Une délégation de Boeing devrait se rendre en Indonésie la semaine prochaine pour discuter de cette annulation, a-t-il précisé. Garuda discute aussi avec Boeing de la question de savoir si la compagnie rendra l’appareil qu’elle a déjà reçu, a indiqué le porte-parole. La compagnie avait déjà versé 26 millions de dollars environ à Boeing. Le PDG de Garuda I Gusti Ngurah Ashkara Danadiputra a déclaré récemment à Detik, un média d’information indonésien, que la compagnie envisagerait d’opter pour une autre version du 737.
    […]
    De fait, pour lutter contre les doutes qui s’installent autour de son appareil, l’avionneur américain a annoncé qu’il allait désormais l’équiper d’un signal d’alerte lumineux pour avertir de tout dysfonctionnement du système anti-décrochage MCAS, mis en cause dans l’accident. Cette fonctionnalité, qui était jusqu’à présent optionnelle, va devenir partie intégrante de l’avion : c’est une des modifications que Boeing va présenter aux autorités américaines ainsi qu’aux compagnies clientes dans les prochains jours, a ajouté cette source sous couvert d’anonymat.

    Elle a par ailleurs indiqué que ni le 737 MAX 8 de la compagnie indonésienne Lion Air ni celui d’Ethiopian Airlines, qui s’est écrasé le 10 mars, faisant 157 morts, n’étaient équipés d’un tel signal. American Airlines, qui exploite 24 737 MAX 8, avait, elle, acheté l’option, anticipant de potentiels désaccords entre les systèmes de l’avion, a indiqué à l’AFP une source interne. Idem pour Southwest, plus grosse cliente de cet avion, qui a même rajouté en début d’année une option supplémentaire visant à activer le "Primary Flight Display (PFD), qui rassemble tous les paramètres nécessaires au pilotage, assure une porte-parole. Contactés par l’AFP, Boeing et l’agence fédérale de l’aviation, la FAA, n’ont pas souhaité faire de commentaire.

  • Boeing 737Max, l’enchaînement des modifications marginales aboutit à une catastrophe (deux catastrophes ?) Sous la pression de la réduction des coûts, un bricolo dans le logiciel de contrôle de vol a été introduit et de ne pas en informer les pilotes (il aurait fallu les faire repasser au simulateur de vol pour les habiliter au nouveau système…)

    After a Lion Air 737 Max Crashed in October, Questions About the Plane Arose - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/world/asia/lion-air-plane-crash-pilots.html


    Boeing’s 737 Max is the latest version of a plane that first went into service half a century ago.
    Credit : Matt Mcknight/Reuters

    But Boeing’s engineers had a problem. Because the new engines for the Max were larger than those on the older version, they needed to be mounted higher and farther forward on the wings to provide adequate ground clearance.

    Early analysis revealed that the bigger engines, mounted differently than on the previous version of the 737, would have a destabilizing effect on the airplane, especially at lower speeds during high-banked, tight-turn maneuvers, Mr. Ludtke said.

    The concern was that an increased risk of the nose being pushed up at low airspeeds could cause the plane to get closer to the angle at which it stalls, or loses lift, Mr. Ludtke said.

    After weighing many possibilities, Mr. Ludtke said, Boeing decided to add a new program — what engineers described as essentially some lines of code — to the aircraft’s existing flight control system to counter the destabilizing pitching forces from the new engines.

    That program was M.C.A.S.
    […]
    The F.A.A. would also determine what kind of training would be required for pilots on specific design changes to the Max compared with the previous version. Some changes would require training short of simulator time, such as computer-based instruction.

    I would think this is one of those systems that the pilots should know it’s onboard and when it’s activated,” said Chuck Horning, the department chairman for aviation maintenance science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

    That was not the choice that Boeing — or regulators — would make.

    The F.A.A. Sides With Boeing
    Ultimately, the F.A.A. determined that there were not enough differences between the 737 Max and the prior iteration to require pilots to go through simulator training.

    While the agency did require pilots to be given less onerous training or information on a variety of other changes between the two versions of the plane, M.C.A.S. was not among those items either.
    […]
    At least as far as pilots knew, M.C.A.S. did not exist, even though it would play a key role in controlling the plane under certain circumstances.

    Boeing did not hide the modified system. It was documented in maintenance manuals for the plane, and airlines were informed about it during detailed briefings on differences between the Max and earlier versions of the 737.

    But the F.A.A.’s determination that the system did not have to be flagged for pilots gave pause to some other regulators.

    Across the Atlantic, the European Aviation Safety Agency, the European Union’s equivalent of the F.A.A., had qualms, according to a pilot familiar with the European regulator’s certification process.

    At first, the agency was inclined to rule that M.C.A.S. needed to be included in the flight operations manual for the Max, which in turn would have required that pilots be made aware of the new system through a classroom or computer course, the pilot said. But ultimately, he said, the agency did not consider the issue important enough to hold its ground, and eventually it went along with Boeing and the F.A.A.

    • Après avoir tergiversé devant l’énormité de l’enjeu, la FAA a suspendu les vols et Boeing annonce cesser les livraisons. Deux par jour ! comme le dit l’article, il va falloir pousser les murs à Renton…

      Boeing gèle les livraisons des B 737 MAX : près de 2 avions par jour sont concernés !
      https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/boeing-gele-les-livraisons-des-b-737-max-pres-de-2-avions-par-jour-sont-co


      Crédits : © POOL New / Reuters

      Boeing annoncé la suspension des livraisons de ses avions moyen-courriers 737 MAX, qui ont été interdits provisoirement de vol dans le monde après deux accidents récents d’appareils de ce type, l’un d’Ethiopian Airlines, l’autre de Lion Air. Mais l’avionneur continue la production en espérant implémenter la solution à ses problèmes une fois qu’elle sera validée.

      Ce jeudi, en début de soirée en France, au lendemain de l’immobilisation totale de la flotte de B 737 MAX qui a suivi l’accident d’Ethiopian Airlines le 10 mars dernier dans des circonstances similaires à celles observées lors du crash de Lion Air en octobre, Boeing a annoncé la suspension des livraisons de ses appareils moyen-courriers.

      « Nous suspendons la livraison des 737 MAX jusqu’à ce que nous trouvions une solution », a déclaré à l’AFP un porte-parole, ajoutant que l’avionneur américain poursuivait en revanche leur production en écartant l’éventualité de réduire les cadences.

      Il va falloir trouver de la place. Boeing construit 52 B737 MAX par mois, quasiment deux par jour.

      « Nous sommes en train d’évaluer nos capacités », c’est-à-dire de savoir où les avions sortis des chaînes d’assemblage vont être stockés, a-t-il admis.

      Boeing entend donc continuer à assembler les avions et introduire la solution à ses problèmes une fois que ces derniers auront été clairement identifiés et que la façon de les résoudre validée.

    • Ça ne s’arrange pas pour Boeing et la FAA qui a délégué une grande partie de la certification de la nouvelle version à …Boeing.

      Flawed analysis, failed oversight: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system | The Seattle Times
      https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/failed-certification-faa-missed-safety-issues-in-the-737-max-system-im


      A worker is seen inside a Boeing 737 MAX 9 at the Renton plant. The circular sensor seen at bottom right measures the plane’s angle of attack, the angle between the airflow and the wing. This sensor on 737 MAX planes is under scrutiny as a possible cause of two recent fatal crashes.
      Mike Siegel / The Seattle Times

      Federal Aviation Administration managers pushed its engineers to delegate wide responsibility for assessing the safety of the 737 MAX to Boeing itself. But safety engineers familiar with the documents shared details that show the analysis included crucial flaws.

      As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis.

      But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX — a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly — had several crucial flaws.

      That flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), is now under scrutiny after two crashes of the jet in less than five months resulted in Wednesday’s FAA order to ground the plane.

      Current and former engineers directly involved with the evaluations or familiar with the document shared details of Boeing’s “System Safety Analysis” of MCAS, which The Seattle Times confirmed.

      The safety analysis:
      • Understated the power of the new flight control system, which was designed to swivel the horizontal tail to push the nose of the plane down to avert a stall. When the planes later entered service, MCAS was capable of moving the tail more than four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis document.
      • Failed to account for how the system could reset itself each time a pilot responded, thereby missing the potential impact of the system repeatedly pushing the airplane’s nose downward.
      • Assessed a failure of the system as one level below “catastrophic.” But even that “hazardous” danger level should have precluded activation of the system based on input from a single sensor — and yet that’s how it was designed.

      The people who spoke to The Seattle Times and shared details of the safety analysis all spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their jobs at the FAA and other aviation organizations.

      Both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX last Sunday.
      […]
      Delegated to Boeing
      The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.

      Early on in certification of the 737 MAX, the FAA safety engineering team divided up the technical assessments that would be delegated to Boeing versus those they considered more critical and would be retained within the FAA.

      But several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing.

      A former FAA safety engineer who was directly involved in certifying the MAX said that halfway through the certification process, “we were asked by management to re-evaluate what would be delegated. Management thought we had retained too much at the FAA.

      There was constant pressure to re-evaluate our initial decisions,” the former engineer said. “And even after we had reassessed it … there was continued discussion by management about delegating even more items down to the Boeing Company.

      Even the work that was retained, such as reviewing technical documents provided by Boeing, was sometimes curtailed.
      […]
      Inaccurate limit
      In this atmosphere, the System Safety Analysis on MCAS, just one piece of the mountain of documents needed for certification, was delegated to Boeing.

      The original Boeing document provided to the FAA included a description specifying a limit to how much the system could move the horizontal tail — a limit of 0.6 degrees, out of a physical maximum of just less than 5 degrees of nose-down movement.

      That limit was later increased after flight tests showed that a more powerful movement of the tail was required to avert a high-speed stall, when the plane is in danger of losing lift and spiraling down.
      […]
      After the Lion Air Flight 610 crash, Boeing for the first time provided to airlines details about MCAS. Boeing’s bulletin to the airlines stated that the limit of MCAS’s command was 2.5 degrees.

      That number was new to FAA engineers who had seen 0.6 degrees in the safety assessment.
      […]
      System failed on a single sensor
      The bottom line of Boeing’s System Safety Analysis with regard to MCAS was that, in normal flight, an activation of MCAS to the maximum assumed authority of 0.6 degrees was classified as only a “major failure,” meaning that it could cause physical distress to people on the plane, but not death.

      In the case of an extreme maneuver, specifically when the plane is in a banked descending spiral, an activation of MCAS was classified as a “hazardous failure,” meaning that it could cause serious or fatal injuries to a small number of passengers. That’s still one level below a “catastrophic failure,” which represents the loss of the plane with multiple fatalities.
      […]
      Boeing’s System Safety Analysis assessment that the MCAS failure would be “hazardous” troubles former flight controls engineer Lemme because the system is triggered by the reading from a single angle-of-attack sensor.

      A hazardous failure mode depending on a single sensor, I don’t think passes muster,” said Lemme.

      Like all 737s, the MAX actually has two of the sensors, one on each side of the fuselage near the cockpit. But the MCAS was designed to take a reading from only one of them.

      Lemme said Boeing could have designed the system to compare the readings from the two vanes, which would have indicated if one of them was way off.

      Alternatively, the system could have been designed to check that the angle-of-attack reading was accurate while the plane was taxiing on the ground before takeoff, when the angle of attack should read zero.

      They could have designed a two-channel system. Or they could have tested the value of angle of attack on the ground,” said Lemme. “I don’t know why they didn’t.

      The black box data provided in the preliminary investigation report shows that readings from the two sensors differed by some 20 degrees not only throughout the flight but also while the airplane taxied on the ground before takeoff.

      No training, no information
      After the Lion Air crash, 737 MAX pilots around the world were notified about the existence of MCAS and what to do if the system is triggered inappropriately.

    • VF

      Crashs de 737 MAX : la justice américaine se saisit du dossier
      https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2019/03/19/crashs-de-737-max-la-justice-americaine-s-en-mele_5438002_3210.html


      Les Boeing 737 Max sont collés au sol à Phoenix, dans l’Arizona (Etats-Unis).
      Matt York / AP

      La justice américaine a décidé de faire la lumière sur les relations entre Boeing et les autorités fédérales chargées de certifier ses appareils 737 MAX, à la suite de deux accidents qui ont fait 346 morts à moins de cinq mois d’intervalle.
      Le 11 mars, soit au lendemain de la tragédie du vol d’Ethiopian Airlines, la justice a assigné au moins une personne impliquée dans le développement du programme 737 MAX à fournir des documents, incluant des lettres, des courriels ou d’autres messages, révèle le Wall Street Journal lundi 18 mars, qui cite des sources proches du dossier.
      […]
      L’affaire « prend un tour entièrement nouveau avec l’enquête criminelle », a réagi Scott Hamilton, expert aéronautique chez Leeham Company. « Contrairement à la France, où les enquêtes criminelles sont habituelles quand il y a un accident d’avion, c’est très, très rare aux Etats-Unis », souligne-t-il, se souvenant d’un seul précédent, celui de ValuJet. Le 11 mai 1996, l’accident d’un DC-9 de cette compagnie en Floride avait fait 110 morts.

      Parallèlement, le département américain des transports mène une enquête sur le processus d’approbation par le régulateur du transport aérien (FAA) des 737 MAX, a également dévoilé le WSJ dimanche. Il se penche en particulier sur le système de stabilisation de l’avion destiné à éviter le décrochage, dit « MCAS » (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System).
      […]
      Des documents disponibles sur le site de la FAA montrent que le 737 MAX a été certifié comme une variante du 737 NG, son prédécesseur. Autrement dit, il n’a pas été inspecté dans son intégralité, la FAA estimant qu’il n’était pas nécessaire d’examiner certains systèmes. Cela n’est pas inhabituel dans l’aéronautique s’agissant d’un avion qui n’est pas entièrement nouveau.

      Plus gênant, selon des sources concordantes, le régulateur, confronté à des coupes budgétaires et manquant d’expertise, a délégué à des employés de Boeing la certification du MCAS. Or ce système a, lui, été spécialement conçu pour le 737 MAX, afin de compenser le fait que ce nouvel aéronef dispose de moteurs plus lourds que ceux équipant le 737 NG et qu’il présentait, de ce fait, un risque plus élevé de décrochage.

      Note que l’explication fournie est au minimum rapide, voire carrément fausse (cf. supra, la modification des moteurs (plus gros) a surtout entrainé un changement de leur position – surélévation et déplacement vers l’avant - ce qui modifie fortement le centrage de l’avion)

      Et la Chambre s’y mettrait aussi…

      Peter DeFazio, le président de la commission parlementaire des transports à la Chambre des représentants, envisage, lui, de lancer une enquête sur la certification du 737 MAX, selon des sources parlementaires, ajoutant que des auditions publiques de responsables de la FAA ne sont pas exclues.

    • Washington lance un audit sur la certification du Boeing 737 MAX
      https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/washington-lance-un-audit-sur-la-certification-du-boeing-737-max-811302.ht

      [La] secrétaire américaine aux Transports, Elaine Chao, a annoncé mardi qu’elle avait demandé à ses services de vérifier la procédure de certification du Boeing 737 MAX par l’aviation civile américaine. Par ailleurs, un nouveau patron a été nommé à la tête de la FAA, la direction de l’aviation civile américaine. Boeing a également [re]manié l’équipe dirigeante de l’ingénierie.

      Confirmant des informations de presse, le ministère américain des Transports (DoT) a indiqué mardi avoir lancé un audit sur le processus de certification du Boeing 737 MAX 8 par la Federal Administration Agency (FAA), la direction générale de l’aviation civile américaine, après les accidents de Lion Air fin octobre 2018 et d’Ethiopian Airlines le 10 mars denier, faisant au total 346 morts. Dans les deux cas, le 737MAX, un avion mis en service en mai 2017, était flambant neuf. Dans les deux cas, ils se sont écrasés peu après le décollage après avoir connu des montées et des descentes irrégulières lors de la phase de montée.
      […]
      Par ailleurs, Donald Trump a annoncé mardi son intention de nommer Steve Dickson, un ancien pilote de chasse et pilote de ligne, à la tête de la FAA. Steve Dickson doit être nommé comme administrateur de la FAA pour une période de cinq ans et comme président du Comité des services du trafic aérien au département du Transport. Steve Dickson, qui a pris récemment sa retraite, a une longue expérience du transport aérien puisqu’il était responsable de la sécurité et des services opérationnels au sein de la compagnie américaine Delta Airlines. Il était en outre instructeur. En tant que pilote de ligne, il a l’expérience des avions moyen-courriers : Airbus A320, Boeing 727, 737, 757. Steve Dickson était également, au début de sa carrière, pilote sur l’avion de combat F-15.

      La division d’aviation commerciale de Boeing a selon Reuters remanié l’équipe dirigeante de l’ingénierie. John Hamilton, qui occupait les fonctions de vice-président et d’ingénieur en chef, va se concentrer uniquement sur le rôle d’ingénieur en chef, a déclaré le PDG de la division d’aviation commerciale, Kevin McAllister, dans un email envoyé aux employés. Lynne Hopper, jusque-là en charge de l’unité test et évaluation, est nommée vice-présidente de l’ingénierie, a-t-il ajouté.

      La réorganisation va permettre à Hamilton de « focaliser toute son attention sur les enquêtes en cours sur l’accident », écrit McAllister, soulignant que des changements étaient nécessaires alors que l’avionneur américain « dédie des ressources supplémentaires » à ces enquêtes.

    • Boeing a le droit de faire voler ses 737 MAX (pour les stocker ailleurs qu’à Seattle)
      https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/boeing-a-le-droit-de-faire-voler-ses-737-max-pour-les-stocker-ailleurs-qu-

      Malgré l’interdiction des vols des 737 MAX la direction de l’aviation civile américaine a autorisé à Boeing à les faire [voler] pour parquer quelque part les avions assemblés qui ne pourront plus être stockés sur le site de production de Seattle, faute de place.

      Les Boeing 737 MAX peuvent reprendre les airs sans attendre les conclusions de l’enquête de l’accident d’un appareil de ce type d’Ethiopian Airlines, faisant 157 victimes à bord le 10 mars. Mais sans passagers à bord. Si les vols reprennent effectivement, ce sera uniquement pour aller parquer quelque part les appareils qui sortent de la chaîne d’assemblage et qui ne pourront plus être stockés sur le site de production de Renton, près de Seattle. Si Boeing a interrompu les livraisons, l’avionneur a maintenu la production dans le but d’introduite la solution à ses problèmes sur tous les avions stockés et livrer rapidement ces derniers.

      Selon les autorités américaines, de telles dispositions ont été accordées à Boeing par la Federal Administration Agency (FAA), la direction générale de l’aviation civile, lorsque cette dernière a interdit les vols des 737 MAX la semaine dernière. « La FAA a décidé d’interdire les opérations, mais n’a pas retiré le certificat de navigabilité de l’avion qui aurait décrété que l’avion n’était pas en mesure de voler », a expliqué surpris à La Tribune, un expert européen des questions de sécurité. En attendant, si Boeing décidait de faire voler ses avions pour aller les parquer ailleurs qu’à Renton, la décision pourrait en surprendre plus d’un. Comment pourrait-on autoriser un avion cloué au sol pour des raisons de sécurité reprendre les airs avec des pilotes à bord ?

      Avec une cadence de production de 52 appareils par mois, l’avionneur est confronté au défi du stockage de ces avions qu’il ne peut pas livrer aux compagnies aériennes. Selon nos informations, Boeing a des solutions pour absorber deux mois de production, soit plus de 100 appareils.

      (note, les chapeaux des articles sont rédigés au lance-pierre, il y manque des mots ou des bouts de mots…)

  • Oh, le « shutdown » de Trump a des effets sur la sécurité des gens dans le monde entier...

    Boeing to Make Key Change in 737 MAX Cockpit Software - WSJ
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-to-make-key-change-in-max-cockpit-software-11552413489

    A software fix to the MCAS flight-control feature by the FAA and Boeing had been expected early in January, but discussions between regulators and the plane maker dragged on, partly over differences of opinion about technical and engineering issues, according to people familiar with the details. Officials from various parts of Boeing and the FAA had differing views about how extensive the fix should be.

    U.S. officials have said the federal government’s recent shutdown also halted work on the fix for five weeks.

  • FaaS #marketing Strategy ft. Mason
    https://hackernoon.com/faas-marketing-strategy-ft-mason-6082bce8807c?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3

    FaaS Marketing Strategy For MasonThis morning I came across an interesting company on ProductHunt called Mason.They have a tool they’re calling “front end as a service” that looks like it’s a WYSIWYG builder for web apps that spits out code blocks.Pretty straightforward value.Pretty straightforward audience (anyone building app front ends).And a pretty straightforward website that has great placement of logos, trust factors, and CTAs.Their website also shows off their product really well in photos — something that I think a lot of websites miss, especially in SaaS.Overall, their site has good design. Something I’d expect from a company that sells to designers.So…. let’s break down their marketing strategy.At a more abstract level, I think one of their biggest opportunities is not a channel or a (...)

    #faas-marketing #faas-marketing-strategy #masons #faa

  • Pan Am Flight 103 : Robert Mueller’s 30-Year Search for Justice | WIRED
    https://www.wired.com/story/robert-muellers-search-for-justice-for-pan-am-103

    Cet article décrit le rôle de Robert Mueller dans l’enquête historique qui a permis de dissimuler ou de justifier la plupart des batailles de la guerre non déclarée des États Unis contre l’OLP et les pays arabes qui soutenaient la lutte pour un état palestinien.

    Aux États-Unis, en Allemagne et en France le grand public ignore les actes de guerre commis par les États Unis dans cette guerre. Vu dans ce contexte on ne peut que classer le récit de cet article dans la catégorie idéologie et propagande même si les intentions et faits qu’on y apprend sont bien documentés et plausibles.

    Cette perspective transforme le contenu de cet article d’une variation sur un thème connu dans un reportage sur l’état d’âme des dirigeants étatsuniens moins fanatiques que l’équipe du président actuel.

    THIRTY YEARS AGO last Friday, on the darkest day of the year, 31,000 feet above one of the most remote parts of Europe, America suffered its first major terror attack.

    TEN YEARS AGO last Friday, then FBI director Robert Mueller bundled himself in his tan trench coat against the cold December air in Washington, his scarf wrapped tightly around his neck. Sitting on a small stage at Arlington National Cemetery, he scanned the faces arrayed before him—the victims he’d come to know over years, relatives and friends of husbands and wives who would never grow old, college students who would never graduate, business travelers and flight attendants who would never come home.

    Burned into Mueller’s memory were the small items those victims had left behind, items that he’d seen on the shelves of a small wooden warehouse outside Lockerbie, Scotland, a visit he would never forget: A teenager’s single white sneaker, an unworn Syracuse University sweatshirt, the wrapped Christmas gifts that would never be opened, a lonely teddy bear.

    A decade before the attacks of 9/11—attacks that came during Mueller’s second week as FBI director, and that awoke the rest of America to the threats of terrorism—the bombing of Pan Am 103 had impressed upon Mueller a new global threat.

    It had taught him the complexity of responding to international terror attacks, how unprepared the government was to respond to the needs of victims’ families, and how on the global stage justice would always be intertwined with geopolitics. In the intervening years, he had never lost sight of the Lockerbie bombing—known to the FBI by the codename Scotbom—and he had watched the orphaned children from the bombing grow up over the years.

    Nearby in the cemetery stood a memorial cairn made of pink sandstone—a single brick representing each of the victims, the stone mined from a Scottish quarry that the doomed flight passed over just seconds before the bomb ripped its baggage hold apart. The crowd that day had gathered near the cairn in the cold to mark the 20th anniversary of the bombing.

    For a man with an affinity for speaking in prose, not poetry, a man whose staff was accustomed to orders given in crisp sentences as if they were Marines on the battlefield or under cross-examination from a prosecutor in a courtroom, Mueller’s remarks that day soared in a way unlike almost any other speech he’d deliver.

    “There are those who say that time heals all wounds. But you know that not to be true. At its best, time may dull the deepest wounds; it cannot make them disappear,” Mueller told the assembled mourners. “Yet out of the darkness of this day comes a ray of light. The light of unity, of friendship, and of comfort from those who once were strangers and who are now bonded together by a terrible moment in time. The light of shared memories that bring smiles instead of sadness. And the light of hope for better days to come.”

    He talked of Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and of inspiration drawn from Lockerbie’s town crest, with its simple motto, “Forward.” He spoke of what was then a two-decade-long quest for justice, of how on windswept Scottish mores and frigid lochs a generation of FBI agents, investigators, and prosecutors had redoubled their dedication to fighting terrorism.

    Mueller closed with a promise: “Today, as we stand here together on this, the darkest of days, we renew that bond. We remember the light these individuals brought to each of you here today. We renew our efforts to bring justice down on those who seek to harm us. We renew our efforts to keep our people safe, and to rid the world of terrorism. We will continue to move forward. But we will never forget.”

    Hand bells tolled for each of the victims as their names were read aloud, 270 names, 270 sets of bells.

    The investigation, though, was not yet closed. Mueller, although he didn’t know it then, wasn’t done with Pan Am 103. Just months after that speech, the case would test his innate sense of justice and morality in a way that few other cases in his career ever have.

    ROBERT S. MUELLER III had returned from a combat tour in Vietnam in the late 1960s and eventually headed to law school at the University of Virginia, part of a path that he hoped would lead him to being an FBI agent. Unable after graduation to get a job in government, he entered private practice in San Francisco, where he found he loved being a lawyer—just not a defense attorney.

    Then—as his wife Ann, a teacher, recounted to me years ago—one morning at their small home, while the two of them made the bed, Mueller complained, “Don’t I deserve to be doing something that makes me happy?” He finally landed a job as an assistant US attorney in San Francisco and stood, for the first time, in court and announced, “Good morning your Honor, I am Robert Mueller appearing on behalf of the United States of America.” It is a moment that young prosecutors often practice beforehand, and for Mueller those words carried enormous weight. He had found the thing that made him happy.

    His family remembers that time in San Francisco as some of their happiest years; the Muellers’ two daughters were young, they loved the Bay Area—and have returned there on annual vacations almost every year since relocating to the East Coast—and Mueller found himself at home as a prosecutor.

    On Friday nights, their routine was that Ann and the two girls would pick Mueller up at Harrington’s Bar & Grill, the city’s oldest Irish pub, not far from the Ferry Building in the Financial District, where he hung out each week with a group of prosecutors, defense attorneys, cops, and agents. (One Christmas, his daughter Cynthia gave him a model of the bar made out of Popsicle sticks.) He balanced that family time against weekends and trainings with the Marines Corps Reserves, where he served for more than a decade, until 1980, eventually rising to be a captain.

    Over the next 15 years, he rose through the ranks of the San Francisco US attorney’s office—an office he would return to lead during the Clinton administration—and then decamped to Massachusetts to work for US attorney William Weld in the 1980s. There, too, he shined and eventually became acting US attorney when Weld departed at the end of the Reagan administration. “You cannot get the words straight arrow out of your head,” Weld told me, speaking of Mueller a decade ago. “The agencies loved him because he knew his stuff. He didn’t try to be elegant or fancy, he just put the cards on the table.”

    In 1989, an old high school classmate, Robert Ross, who was chief of staff to then attorney general Richard Thornburgh, asked Mueller to come down to Washington to help advise Thornburgh. The offer intrigued Mueller. Ann protested the move—their younger daughter Melissa wanted to finish high school in Massachusetts. Ann told her husband, “We can’t possibly do this.” He replied, his eyes twinkling, “You’re right, it’s a terrible time. Well, why don’t we just go down and look at a few houses?” As she told me, “When he wants to do something, he just revisits it again and again.”

    For his first two years at so-called Main Justice in Washington, working under President George H.W. Bush, the family commuted back and forth from Boston to Washington, alternating weekends in each city, to allow Melissa to finish school.

    Washington gave Mueller his first exposure to national politics and cases with geopolitical implications; in September 1990, President Bush nominated him to be assistant attorney general, overseeing the Justice Department’s entire criminal division, which at that time handled all the nation’s terrorism cases as well. Mueller would oversee the prosecution of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, mob boss John Gotti, and the controversial investigation into a vast money laundering scheme run through the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, known as the Bank of Crooks and Criminals

    None of his cases in Washington, though, would affect him as much as the bombing of Pan Am 103.

    THE TIME ON the clocks in Lockerbie, Scotland, read 7:04 pm, on December 21, 1988, when the first emergency call came into the local fire brigade, reporting what sounded like a massive boiler explosion. It was technically early evening, but it had been dark for hours already; that far north, on the shortest day of the year, daylight barely stretched to eight hours.

    Soon it became clear something much worse than a boiler explosion had unfolded: Fiery debris pounded the landscape, plunging from the sky and killing 11 Lockerbie residents. As Mike Carnahan told a local TV reporter, “The whole sky was lit up with flames. It was actually raining, liquid fire. You could see several houses on the skyline with the roofs totally off and all you could see was flaming timbers.”

    At 8:45 pm, a farmer found in his field the cockpit of Pan Am 103, a Boeing 747 known as Clipper Maid of the Seas, lying on its side, 15 of its crew dead inside, just some of the 259 passengers and crew killed when a bomb had exploded inside the plane’s cargo hold. The scheduled London to New York flight never even made it out of the UK.

    It had taken just three seconds for the plane to disintegrate in the air, though the wreckage took three long minutes to fall the five miles from the sky to the earth; court testimony later would examine how passengers had still been alive as they fell. Nearly 200 of the passengers were American, including 35 students from Syracuse University returning home from a semester abroad. The attack horrified America, which until then had seen terror touch its shores only occasionally as a hijacking went awry; while the US had weathered the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, attacks almost never targeted civilians.

    The Pan Am 103 bombing seemed squarely aimed at the US, hitting one of its most iconic brands. Pan Am then represented America’s global reach in a way few companies did; the world’s most powerful airline shuttled 19 million passengers a year to more than 160 countries and had ferried the Beatles to their US tour and James Bond around the globe on his cinematic missions. In a moment of hubris a generation before Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the airline had even opened a “waiting list” for the first tourists to travel to outer space. Its New York headquarters, the Pan Am building, was the world’s largest commercial building and its terminal at JFK Airport the biggest in the world.

    The investigation into the bombing of Pan Am 103 began immediately, as police and investigators streamed north from London by the hundreds; chief constable John Boyd, the head of the local police, arrived at the Lockerbie police station by 8:15 pm, and within an hour the first victim had been brought in: A farmer arrived in town with the body of a baby girl who had fallen from the sky. He’d carefully placed her in the front seat of his pickup truck.

    An FBI agent posted in London had raced north too, with the US ambassador, aboard a special US Air Force flight, and at 2 am, when Boyd convened his first senior leadership meeting, he announced, “The FBI is here, and they are fully operational.” By that point, FBI explosives experts were already en route to Scotland aboard an FAA plane; agents would install special secure communications equipment in Lockerbie and remain on site for months.

    Although it quickly became clear that a bomb had targeted Pan Am 103—wreckage showed signs of an explosion and tested positive for PETN and RDX, two key ingredients of the explosive Semtex—the investigation proceeded with frustrating slowness. Pan Am’s records were incomplete, and it took days to even determine the full list of passengers. At the same time, it was the largest crime scene ever investigated—a fact that remains true today.

    Investigators walked 845 square miles, an area 12 times the size of Washington, DC, and searched so thoroughly that they recovered more than 70 packages of airline crackers and ultimately could reconstruct about 85 percent of the fuselage. (Today, the wreckage remains in an English scrapyard.) Constable Boyd, at his first press conference, told the media, “This is a mammoth inquiry.”

    On Christmas Eve, a searcher found a piece of a luggage pallet with signs of obvious scorching, which would indicate the bomb had been in the luggage compartment below the passenger cabin. The evidence was rushed to a special British military lab—one originally created to investigate the Guy Fawkes’ Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament and kill King James I in 1605.

    When the explosive tests came back a day later, the British government called the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for combating terrorism, L. Paul Bremer III (who would go on to be President George W. Bush’s viceroy in Baghdad after the 2003 invasion of Iraq), and officially delivered the news that everyone had anticipated: Pan Am 103 had been downed by a bomb.

    Meanwhile, FBI agents fanned out across the country. In New York, special agent Neil Herman—who would later lead the FBI’s counterterrorism office in New York in the run up to 9/11—was tasked with interviewing some of the victims’ families; many of the Syracuse students on board had been from the New York region. One of the mothers he interviewed hadn’t heard from the government in the 10 days since the attack. “It really struck me how ill-equipped we were to deal with this,” Herman told me, years later. “Multiply her by 270 victims and families.” The bombing underscored that the FBI and the US government had a lot to learn in responding and aiding victims in a terror attack.

    INVESTIGATORS MOVED TOWARD piecing together how a bomb could have been placed on board; years before the 9/11 attack, they discounted the idea of a suicide bomber aboard—there had never been a suicide attack on civil aviation at that point—and so focused on one of two theories: The possibility of a “mule,” an innocent passenger duped into carrying a bomb aboard, or an “inside man,” a trusted airport or airline employee who had smuggled the fatal cargo aboard. The initial suspect list stretched to 1,200 names.

    Yet even reconstructing what was on board took an eternity: Evidence pointed to a Japanese manufactured Toshiba cassette recorder as the likely delivery device for the bomb, and then, by the end of January, investigators located pieces of the suitcase that had held the bomb. After determining that it was a Samsonite bag, police and the FBI flew to the company’s headquarters in the United States and narrowed the search further: The bag, they found, was a System 4 Silhouette 4000 model, color “antique-copper,” a case and color made for only three years, 1985 to 1988, and sold only in the Middle East. There were a total of 3,500 such suitcases in circulation.

    By late spring, investigators had identified 14 pieces of luggage inside the target cargo container, known as AVE4041; each bore tell-tale signs of the explosion. Through careful retracing of how luggage moved through the London airport, investigators determined that the bags on the container’s bottom row came from passengers transferring in London. The bags on the second and third row of AVE4041 had been the last bags loaded onto the leg of the flight that began in Frankfurt, before the plane took off for London. None of the baggage had been X-rayed or matched with passengers on board.

    The British lab traced clothing fragments from the wreckage that bore signs of the explosion and thus likely originated in the bomb-carrying suitcase. It was an odd mix: Two herring-bone skirts, men’s pajamas, tartan trousers, and so on. The most promising fragment was a blue infant’s onesie that, after fiber analysis, was conclusively determined to have been inside the explosive case, and had a label saying “Malta Trading Company.” In March, two detectives took off for Malta, where the manufacturer told them that 500 such articles of clothing had been made and most sent to Ireland, while the rest went locally to Maltese outlets and others to continental Europe.

    As they dug deeper, they focused on bag B8849, which appeared to have come off Air Malta Flight 180—Malta to Frankfurt—on December 21, even though there was no record of one of that flight’s 47 passengers transferring to Pan Am 103.

    Investigators located the store in Malta where the suspect clothing had been sold; the British inspector later recorded in his statement, “[Store owner] Anthony Gauci interjected and stated that he could recall selling a pair of the checked trousers, size 34, and three pairs of the pajamas to a male person.” The investigators snapped to attention—after nine months did they finally have a suspect in their sights? “[Gauci] informed me that the man had also purchased the following items: one imitation Harris Tweed jacket; one woolen cardigan; one black umbrella; one blue colored ‘Baby Gro’ with a motif described by the witness as a ‘sheep’s face’ on the front; and one pair of gents’ brown herring-bone material trousers, size 36.”

    Game, set, match. Gauci had perfectly described the clothing fragments found by RARDE technicians to contain traces of explosive. The purchase, Gauci went on to explain, stood out in his mind because the customer—whom Gauci tellingly identified as speaking the “Libyan language”—had entered the store on November 23, 1988, and gathered items without seeming to care about the size, gender, or color of any of it.

    As the investigation painstakingly proceeded into 1989 and 1990, Robert Mueller arrived at Main Justice; the final objects of the Lockerbie search wouldn’t be found until the spring of 1990, just months before Mueller took over as assistant attorney general of the criminal division in September.

    The Justice Department that year was undergoing a series of leadership changes; the deputy attorney general, William Barr, became acting attorney general midyear as Richard Thornburgh stepped down to run for Senate back in his native Pennsylvania. President Bush then nominated Barr to take over as attorney general officially. (Earlier this month Barr was nominated by President Trump to become attorney general once again.)

    The bombing soon became one of the top cases on Mueller’s desk. He met regularly with Richard Marquise, the FBI special agent heading Scotbom. For Mueller, the case became personal; he met with victims’ families and toured the Lockerbie crash site and the investigation’s headquarters. He traveled repeatedly to the United Kingdom for meetings and walked the fields of Lockerbie himself. “The Scots just did a phenomenal job with the crime scene,” he told me, years ago.

    Mueller pushed the investigators forward constantly, getting involved in the investigation at a level that a high-ranking Justice Department official almost never does. Marquise turned to him in one meeting, after yet another set of directions, and sighed, “Geez, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you want to be FBI director.”

    The investigation gradually, carefully, zeroed in on Libya. Agents traced a circuit board used in the bomb to a similar device seized in Africa a couple of years earlier used by Libyan intelligence. An FBI-created database of Maltese immigration records even showed that a man using the same alias as one of those Libyan intelligence officers had departed from Malta on October 19, 1988—just two months before the bombing.

    The circuit board also helped makes sense of an important aspect of the bombing: It controlled a timer, meaning that the bomb was not set off by a barometric trigger that registers altitude. This, in turn, explained why the explosive baggage had lain peacefully in the jet’s hold as it took off and landed repeatedly.

    Tiny letters on the suspect timer said “MEBO.” What was MEBO? In the days before Google, searching for something called “Mebo” required going country to country, company to company. There were no shortcuts. The FBI, MI5, and CIA were, after months of work, able to trace MEBO back to a Swiss company, Meister et Bollier, adding a fifth country to the ever-expanding investigative circle.

    From Meister et Bollier, they learned that the company had provided 20 prototype timers to the Libyan government and the company helped ID their contact as a Libyan intelligence officer, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who looked like the sketch of the Maltese clothing shopper. Then, when the FBI looked at its database of Maltese immigration records, they found that Al Megrahi had been present in Malta the day the clothing was purchased.

    Marquise sat down with Robert Mueller and the rest of the prosecutorial team and laid out the latest evidence. Mueller’s orders were clear—he wanted specific suspects and he wanted to bring charges. As he said, “Proceed toward indictment.” Let’s get this case moving.

    IN NOVEMBER 1990, Marquise was placed in charge of all aspects of the investigation and assigned on special duty to the Washington Field Office and moved to a new Scotbom task force. The field offce was located far from the Hoover building, in a run-down neighborhood known by the thoroughly unromantic moniker of Buzzard Point.

    The Scotbom task force had been allotted three tiny windowless rooms with dark wood paneling, which were soon covered floor-to-ceiling with 747 diagrams, crime scene photographs, maps, and other clues. By the door of the office, the team kept two photographs to remind themselves of the stakes: One, a tiny baby shoe recovered from the fields of Lockerbie; the other, a picture of the American flag on the tail of Pan Am 103. This was the first major attack on the US and its civilians. Whoever was responsible couldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

    With representatives from a half-dozen countries—the US, Britain, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, France, and Malta—now sitting around the table, putting together a case that met everyone’s evidentiary standards was difficult. “We talked through everything, and everything was always done to the higher standard,” Marquise says. In the US, for instance, the legal standard for a photo array was six photos; in Scotland, though, it was 12. So every photo array in the investigation had 12 photos to ensure that the IDs could be used in a British court.

    The trail of evidence so far was pretty clear, and it all pointed toward Libya. Yet there was still much work to do prior to an indictment. A solid hunch was one thing. Having evidence that would stand up in court and under cross-examination was something else entirely.

    As the case neared an indictment, the international investigators and prosecutors found themselves focusing at their gatherings on the fine print of their respective legal code and engaging in deep, philosophical-seeming debates: “What does murder mean in your statute? Huh? I know what murder means: I kill you. Well, then you start going through the details and the standards are just a little different. It may entail five factors in one country, three in another. Was Megrahi guilty of murder? Depends on the country.”

    At every meeting, the international team danced around the question of where a prosecution would ultimately take place. “Jurisdiction was an eggshell problem,” Marquise says. “It was always there, but no one wanted to talk about it. It was always the elephant in the room.”

    Mueller tried to deflect the debate for as long as possible, arguing there was more investigation to do first. Eventually, though, he argued forcefully that the case should be tried in the US. “I recognize that Scotland has significant equities which support trial of the case in your country,” he said in one meeting. “However, the primary target of this act of terrorism was the United States. The majority of the victims were Americans, and the Pan American aircraft was targeted precisely because it was of United States registry.”

    After one meeting, where the Scots and Americans debated jurisdiction for more than two hours, the group migrated over to the Peasant, a restaurant near the Justice Department, where, in an attempt to foster good spirits, it paid for the visiting Scots. Mueller and the other American officials each had to pay for their own meals.

    Mueller was getting ready to move forward; the federal grand jury would begin work in early September. Prosecutors and other investigators were already preparing background, readying evidence, and piecing together information like the names and nationalities of all the Lockerbie victims so that they could be included in the forthcoming indictment.

    There had never been any doubt in the US that the Pan Am 103 bombing would be handled as a criminal matter, but the case was still closely monitored by the White House and the National Security Council.

    The Reagan administration had been surprised in February 1988 by the indictment on drug charges of its close ally Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and a rule of thumb had been developed: Give the White House a heads up anytime you’re going to indict a foreign agent. “If you tag Libya with Pan Am 103, that’s fair to say it’s going to disrupt our relationship with Libya,” Mueller deadpans. So Mueller would head up to the Cabinet Room at the White House, charts and pictures in hand, to explain to President Bush and his team what Justice had in mind.

    To Mueller, the investigation underscored why such complex investigations needed a law enforcement eye. A few months after the attack, he sat through a CIA briefing pointing toward Syria as the culprit behind the attack. “That’s always struck with me as a lesson in the difference between intelligence and evidence. I always try to remember that,” he told me, back when he was FBI director. “It’s a very good object lesson about hasty action based on intelligence. What if we had gone and attacked Syria based on that initial intelligence? Then, after the attack, it came out that Libya had been behind it? What could we have done?”

    Marquise was the last witness for the federal grand jury on Friday, November 8, 1991. Only in the days leading up to that testimony had prosecutors zeroed in on Megrahi and another Libyan officer, Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah; as late as the week of the testimony, they had hoped to pursue additional indictments, yet the evidence wasn’t there to get to a conviction.

    Mueller traveled to London to meet with the Peter Fraser, the lord advocate—Scotland’s top prosecutor—and they agreed to announce indictments simultaneously on November 15, 1991. Who got their hands on the suspects first, well, that was a question for later. The joint indictment, Mueller believed, would benefit both countries. “It adds credibility to both our investigations,” he says.

    That coordinated joint, multi-nation statement and indictment would become a model that the US would deploy more regularly in the years to come, as the US and other western nations have tried to coordinate cyber investigations and indictments against hackers from countries like North Korea, Russia, and Iran.

    To make the stunning announcement against Libya, Mueller joined FBI director William Sessions, DC US attorney Jay Stephens, and attorney general William Barr.

    “We charge that two Libyan officials, acting as operatives of the Libyan intelligence agency, along with other co-conspirators, planted and detonated the bomb that destroyed Pan Am 103,” Barr said. “I have just telephoned some of the families of those murdered on Pan Am 103 to inform them and the organizations of the survivors that this indictment has been returned. Their loss has been ever present in our minds.”

    At the same time, in Scotland, investigators there were announcing the same indictments.

    At the press conference, Barr listed a long set of names to thank—the first one he singled out was Mueller’s. Then, he continued, “This investigation is by no means over. It continues unabated. We will not rest until all those responsible are brought to justice. We have no higher priority.”

    From there, the case would drag on for years. ABC News interviewed the two suspects in Libya later that month; both denied any responsibility for the bombing. Marquise was reassigned within six months; the other investigators moved along too.

    Mueller himself left the administration when Bill Clinton became president, spending an unhappy year in private practice before rejoining the Justice Department to work as a junior homicide prosecutor in DC under then US attorney Eric Holder; Mueller, who had led the nation’s entire criminal division was now working side by side with prosecutors just a few years out of law school, the equivalent of a three-star military general retiring and reenlisting as a second lieutenant. Clinton eventually named Mueller the US attorney in San Francisco, the office where he’d worked as a young attorney in the 1970s.

    THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY of the bombing came and went without any justice. Then, in April 1999, prolonged international negotiations led to Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi turning over the two suspects; the international economic sanctions imposed on Libya in the wake of the bombing were taking a toll on his country, and the leader wanted to put the incident behind him.

    The final negotiated agreement said that the two men would be tried by a Scottish court, under Scottish law, in The Hague in the Netherlands. Distinct from the international court there, the three-judge Scottish court would ensure that the men faced justice under the laws of the country where their accused crime had been committed.

    Allowing the Scots to move forward meant some concessions by the US. The big one was taking the death penalty, prohibited in Scotland, off the table. Mueller badly wanted the death penalty. Mueller, like many prosecutors and law enforcement officials, is a strong proponent of capital punishment, but he believes it should be reserved for only egregious crimes. “It has to be especially heinous, and you have to be 100 percent sure he’s guilty,” he says. This case met that criteria. “There’s never closure. If there can’t be closure, there should be justice—both for the victims as well as the society at large,” he says.

    An old US military facility, Kamp Van Zeist, was converted to an elaborate jail and courtroom in The Hague, and the Dutch formally surrendered the two Libyans to Scottish police. The trial began in May 2000. For nine months, the court heard testimony from around the world. In what many observers saw as a political verdict, Al Megrahi was found guilty and Fhimah was found not guilty.

    With barely 24 hours notice, Marquise and victim family members raced from the United States to be in the courtroom to hear the verdict. The morning of the verdict in 2001, Mueller was just days into his tenure as acting deputy US attorney general—filling in for the start of the George W. Bush administration in the department’s No. 2 role as attorney general John Ashcroft got himself situated.

    That day, Mueller awoke early and joined with victims’ families and other officials in Washington, who watched the verdict announcement via a satellite hookup. To him, it was a chance for some closure—but the investigation would go on. As he told the media, “The United States remains vigilant in its pursuit to bring to justice any other individuals who may have been involved in the conspiracy to bring down Pan Am Flight 103.”

    The Scotbom case would leave a deep imprint on Mueller; one of his first actions as FBI director was to recruit Kathryn Turman, who had served as the liaison to the Pan Am 103 victim families during the trial, to head the FBI’s Victim Services Division, helping to elevate the role and responsibility of the FBI in dealing with crime victims.

    JUST MONTHS AFTER that 20th anniversary ceremony with Mueller at Arlington National Cemetery, in the summer of 2009, Scotland released a terminally ill Megrahi from prison after a lengthy appeals process, and sent him back to Libya. The decision was made, the Scottish minister of justice reported, on “compassionate grounds.” Few involved on the US side believed the terrorist deserved compassion. Megrahi was greeted as a hero on the tarmac in Libya—rose petals, cheering crowds. The US consensus remained that he should rot in prison.

    The idea that Megrahi could walk out of prison on “compassionate” ground made a mockery of everything that Mueller had dedicated his life to fighting and doing. Amid a series of tepid official condemnations—President Obama labeled it “highly objectionable”—Mueller fired off a letter to Scottish minister Kenny MacAskill that stood out for its raw pain, anger, and deep sorrow.

    “Over the years I have been a prosecutor, and recently as the Director of the FBI, I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors, since only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision,” Mueller began. “Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this case. I do so because I am familiar with the facts, and the law, having been the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991. And I do so because I am outraged at your decision, blithely defended on the grounds of ‘compassion.’”

    That nine months after the 20th anniversary of the bombing, the only person behind bars for the bombing would walk back onto Libyan soil a free man and be greeted with rose petals left Mueller seething.

    “Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law. Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world,” Mueller wrote. “You could not have spent much time with the families, certainly not as much time as others involved in the investigation and prosecution. You could not have visited the small wooden warehouse where the personal items of those who perished were gathered for identification—the single sneaker belonging to a teenager; the Syracuse sweatshirt never again to be worn by a college student returning home for the holidays; the toys in a suitcase of a businessman looking forward to spending Christmas with his wife and children.”

    For Mueller, walking the fields of Lockerbie had been walking on hallowed ground. The Scottish decision pained him especially deeply, because of the mission and dedication he and his Scottish counterparts had shared 20 years before. “If all civilized nations join together to apply the rules of law to international terrorists, certainly we will be successful in ridding the world of the scourge of terrorism,” he had written in a perhaps too hopeful private note to the Scottish Lord Advocate in 1990.

    Some 20 years later, in an era when counterterrorism would be a massive, multibillion dollar industry and a buzzword for politicians everywhere, Mueller—betrayed—concluded his letter with a decidedly un-Mueller-like plea, shouted plaintively and hopelessly across the Atlantic: “Where, I ask, is the justice?”

    #USA #Libye #impérialisme #terrorisme #histoire #CIA #idéologie #propagande

  • Understanding Starsky Robotics’ Voluntary #safety Self-Assessment
    https://hackernoon.com/understanding-starsky-robotics-voluntary-safety-self-assessment-126e5df1

    Enhancing Highway Safety for the Long-HaulEight months ago, I joined Starsky Robotics as our Director of Safety Policy. I’ve previously worked on FAA certified avionics, automotive electronics systems, and most recently focused on safely integrating unmanned aerial vehicles into the U.S. national airspace. Safety is a critical concern for each of these industries and is at the core of our approach to automation at Starsky. To that end, Starsky’s first step after raising our Series A was bringing me on board to ensure our commitment to safety is an actionable part of everything we do when putting driverless trucks on America’s highways.Our safety strategy begins with an understanding of the term “safety” itself. At Starsky, we use the International Organization for Standardization’s (...)

    #transportation #trucking #autonomous-cars #self-driving-cars

  • THE #serverless SERIES — What Is Serverless?
    https://hackernoon.com/the-serverless-series-what-is-serverless-d651fbacf3f4?source=rss----3a81

    Is Serverless the same as #baas or FaaS? What’s the difference with SaaS? How did we get there and where are we going next? Why can it be beneficial to me now? This post, we will attempt to answer all those questions briefly. We’ll be focusing more on what Serverless does, rather than on what it is, as we are not interested in arguing about the specific traits of a Serverless product.Other topics that will be discussed later in this series will cover subjects such as:Mistakes You Should Avoid With Serverless.Weaknesses Of Serverless and How To Overcome Them.Serverless Comparison.Why We Love Zeit Now & When To Use It Over FaaS.Serverless Event-Driven Architecture: The Natural Fit.How To Manage Back-Pressure With Serverless?GraphQL on Serverless In Less Than 2 Minutes.What Serverless Does (...)

    #cloud-computing #automation #faa

  • Une dizaine de nuances de kaki : les opérations contre-insurrectionnelles au #Sahel

    En 2011, plusieurs États africains ont tenté de mettre en garde contre les risques probables d’une intervention militaire internationale visant à renverser le dictateur libyen Mouammar Kadhafi. Aujourd’hui, six ans après sa mort, l’insécurité au Sahel est plus préoccupante que jamais.


    https://www.irinnews.org/fr/analyses/2018/01/11/une-dizaine-de-nuances-de-kaki-les-operations-contre-insurrectionnelles-au
    #militarisation #armée #insécurité #MINUSMA #MNJTF #G5_Sahel #opérations_militaires #EUTM-Mali #Mali #Niger #Allemagne #USA #Etats-Unis #EU #UE #France #opération_Barkhane #opération_Serval

  • Florida Company Gets Approval to Put Robotic Lander on Moon
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/science/moon-express-faa.html

    Moon Express, based in Cape Canaveral, Fla., announced Wednesday that it had received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to set a robotic lander on the moon.

    That feat would win the Google Lunar X Prize competition for the first private organization to reach the moon and an accompanying $20 million reward.

    [...] The approval reflects an effort to encourage 21st-century commercial space endeavors while staying within an international space treaty written 49 years ago when outer space was a rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the idea of a start-up going to the moon an unlikely fantasy.

    “There are a lot of things in the treaties we’re testing the limits of right now,” said Henry R. Hertzfeld, a professor of space policy and international affairs at George Washington University in Washington. “We’re trying to define them in ways that will encourage private investment and private opportunities but not violate any international agreements.”

    #lune #espace

  • Un #drone manque de heurter un Airbus A380 à son atterrissage
    http://www.lapresse.ca/international/etats-unis/201603/18/01-4962331-un-drone-manque-de-heurter-un-airbus-a380-a-son-atterrissage.php

    Les incidents entre des drones, qui sont des aéronefs sans pilote, et des avions sont devenus de plus en plus fréquents aux États-Unis. La FAA en a recensé 238 en 2014 contre 650 entre janvier et août 2015.

    La Californie est l’État qui en a recensé le plus, selon un rapport publié en 2015 par la sénatrice démocrate Dianne Feinstein.

    Les États-Unis n’ont pas encore adopté de législation sur l’usage croissant des drones, y compris par la police.

  • Drone Survival Guide
    http://www.dronesurvivalguide.org

    Our ancestors could spot natural predators from far by their silhouettes. Are we equally aware of the predators in the present-day? Drones are remote-controlled planes that can be used for anything from surveillance and deadly force, to rescue operations and scientific research. Most drones are used today by military powers for remote-controlled surveillance and attack, and their numbers are growing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) predicted in 2012 that within 20 years there could be as many as 30.000 drones flying over U.S. Soil alone. As robotic birds will become commonplace in the near future, we should be prepared to identify them. This survival guide is an attempt to familiarise ourselves and future generations, with a changing technological environment.

    #drones