Senate probe reveals Boeing’s ‘troubling and recurring’ safety failings
The Boeing logo is pictured at the Boeing Renton Factory in Renton, Washington on March 12, 2019. (JASON REDMOND/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations published a memo Wednesday including new details about Boeing safety failings relating to the Alaska Airlines door plug incident in January.
The memo — released ahead of Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Michael Whitaker’s planned testimony before the subcommittee on Wednesday — suggested Boeing had failed to ensure adequate standards in multiple areas.
Boeing personnel, the memo said, “continue to feel pressure to prioritize speed of production over quality.”
The Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines incident saw a door plug on flight 1282 blow out minutes after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, leaving a large hole in the side of the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane. The plane safely made an emergency landing and no one was seriously injured.
The memo noted the results of a May 2024 employee survey that found only 47% of workers answered favorably to the statement, “Schedule pressures do not cause my team to lower our standards.”
Training also remains a problem, the memo said.
“Boeing is failing to ensure many of their employees have the appropriate education, training, skills or experience to effectively perform their assigned tasks,” it read.
The subcommittee said Boeing failed to ensure that nonconforming parts are appropriately documented, stored and dispositioned so that they are not installed on aircraft.
Quality inspection procedures — and FAA review of those procedures — also raised questions as to the qualifications and independence of inspectors, the memo said.
“Boeing personnel are allowed to inspect the quality of their own work,” it read.
“These troubling and recurring safety deficiencies raise questions about the FAA’s ability to oversee the quality and safety of Boeing aircraft through effective and lasting enforcement,” the memo said.
Wednesday’s memo and Whitaker’s testimony are part of a wider inquiry that began on March 19, investigating Boeing’s safety and culture practices following whistleblower allegations.
(NEW YORK) — Concerns about inflation have increasingly turned to concerns about the job market. Last month’s weaker than expected jobs report led to turmoil in stocks.
Expectations are that Friday’s report will show 161,000 jobs added when it’s released at 8:30 a.m.
If jobs come in around expectations it would mean a slowing but steady job market. Some economists are expecting less, around 150,000, pointing out that August data can often come in worse than expected and can be revised later.
Still, a significantly worse-than-expected report could once again lead to concerns that the Fed’s rapid raising of interest rates has hurt the economy and job market more than previously known.
The Fed is on track to cut interest rates at its next meeting announcement on Sept. 18.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell last month said “the time has come” to lower interest rates.
Powell indicated the Fed would soon bring interest rates down from a 23-year high. The shift could lower borrowing costs for everything from credit cards to auto loans to mortgages.
While the unemployment rate remains historically low, it ticked up to 3.8% last month. A sharp downward revision of job growth estimates in June and July lowered those totals by a combined 110,000 jobs.
(NEW YORK) — The Federal Reserve handed down a large interest rate cut this week, dialing back the central bank’s fight against inflation and signaling welcome relief for borrowers.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the Fed will continue to lower rates and further ease the burden for people and companies saddled with loans.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), a policymaking body at the Fed, on Wednesday forecast further interest rate cuts.
By the end of 2024, interest rates will fall nearly another half of a percentage point from their current level of between 4.75% and 5%, according to FOMC projections. Interest rates will drop another percentage point over the course of 2025, the projections further indicated.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the projections reflect expectations that the economy will sustain the same pair of trends that prompted the rate cut in the first place: falling inflation and rising unemployment.
“These projections, however, are not a committee plan or decision,” Powell said. “As the economy evolves, monetary policy will adjust.”
Experts who spoke to ABC News predicted that the Fed is all but certain to deliver at least one more interest rate cut this year, hewing fairly closely to its projection for the coming months. However, the experts voiced caution about the forecast for rate cuts next year, saying the path would depend on economic performance, which is difficult to anticipate.
“These long-term interest rates projections are almost never correct,” Derek Horstmeyer, a finance professor at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business, told ABC News. “There is a lot of uncertainty.”
The Fed is guided by a dual mandate to keep inflation under control and maximize employment. In theory, low interest rates help stimulate economic activity and boost employment, while high interest rates slow economic performance and ease inflation.
Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of about 9% in 2022, though it remains slightly higher than the Fed’s target of 2%. The FOMC expects the inflation rate to fall to 2.1% next year and to reach the central bank’s target of 2% by 2026, projections show.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has ticked up this year. The FOMC expects that rate to also rise gradually next year, then hold steady over the following two years.
“If we stay on track with these projections, that’ll be great news,” Horstmeyer said. “It will be a signal that we pulled off a soft landing.”
The economy, however, may not perform as anticipated. A snag in the cooldown of inflation, or even an outright reversal, could prompt the Fed to pause its rate projected rate cuts, experts said. On the other hand, a greater-than-expected rise in unemployment or a possible recession could cause the Fed to cut rates faster than initially planned.
“If inflation has any surprise to the upside, it wouldn’t take much to see one of those projected cuts disappear,” William Luther, a professor of economics at Florida Atlantic University, told ABC News, referring to the two quarter-point rate cuts expected over the remainder of 2024.
A spike in unemployment, meanwhile, could prompt the Fed to revisit its plans for interest rates going forward, Luther added.
“If labor markets in particular were to show signs of deterioration over the next two months, we could see considerable revisions to the path of the federal funds rate,” Luther said.
On Wednesday, Powell acknowledged the flexibility of the Fed’s plans for rate cuts.
“We can go quicker if that is appropriate. We can go slower if that’s appropriate. We can pause if that’s appropriate,” Powell said. “This process evolves over time.”
(NEW YORK) — Back in the 1980s, Honda sold a city car in Japan called, appropriately, the Honda City. It would have been a normal hatchback, were it not for what came in the trunk: a Honda motor scooter that drivers could fold up and store in the trunk of the City. It was called the Motocompo, and it was a vehicle that belonged to a sector transportation experts call “micromobility.”
David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, noted that the segment encompasses a range of vehicles.
“Scooters, it can include bikes and e-bikes. Cargo e-bikes sometimes. Where it starts to get a little hazy is when you get into things like mopeds which are a little bit faster. And even golf carts some people group into this category of micromobility,” Zipper told ABC Audio.
The segment has seen an explosion of growth in the last 15 to 20 years, he said. The average price of a new car in the U.S. is just under $48,000, according to recent data from Cox Automotive. And while that’s down slightly from its 2022 peak, for many Americans, it’s still expensive to buy a car. That’s why Zipper said many are now turning to the micromobility sector.
“You’ve seen a variety of different types of innovations and new technologies take hold that have allowed for a lot of different form factors and a lot of different use cases of micromobility,” Zipper said.
Consequently, new companies are emerging to serve the burgeoning market. In an unassuming New York City building across from Brooklyn’s McCarren Park, a startup called Infinite Machine is putting the finishing touches on its take on a micromobility vehicle: an electric scooter called the P1.
The first thing that stands out about the P1 — the company’s first product — is the looks. The scooter has flat, slab-like body panels with sharp edges, all trimmed in black and what looks like stainless steel.
“We were inspired by vehicles like the Delorean and the Cybertruck,” Eddie Cohen, the president of Infinite Machine, said.
He founded the company alongside his brother, CEO Joe Cohen, and the two first unveiled the P1 to the public in 2023.
“Imagine like a Vespa from the future,” Joe Cohen said. “It’s made from aluminum and steel … and it’s super high performance.”
The Cohens told ABC Audio this is the first vehicle in its class to come with Apple CarPlay. The phone-mirroring technology is viewable on a small touchscreen, where riders can also pull up exterior cameras. They’re primarily for “safety and insurance purposes,” Joe Cohen said, but the cameras have other uses.
“If you want to make some content on your ride and record your commute,” he said. “Also when it’s parked if someone screws with your vehicle, you can record that and use that as evidence for the authorities.”
The P1 can go about 60 miles on a charge, according to Infinite Machine. The battery of the P1, which is located in the scooter’s floor, is removable, meaning city dwellers can take it into their homes or apartments to fill up on electricity.
“The power needs for a vehicle like ours are so much lower. You can charge this thing with a normal outlet, you don’t need a special charger. So the question of like infrastructure — charging infrastructure — it’s not relevant for a vehicle like ours,” Joe Cohen said.
Advancements in battery technology are a big reason the micromobility segment is booming, and not just for electric scooters like the P1, Zipper noted.
“Turns out when you stick a battery on a bicycle — it becomes far more useful,” he said.
Electric power allows micromobility vehicles to behave more like traditional cars, according to Zipper.
“Maybe you want to arrive at work without being really sweaty,” he said. “Or you are having some mobility issues and you’re a little bit older and you really value that extra oomph to get up a hill. Maybe you want to be able to power a bicycle with a storage area to bring your kids to school or to get groceries.”
But riding a bike — even an electrically assisted one — in certain big-city environments raises safety concerns.
Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates more than 360,000 injuries related to micromobility devices were treated in emergency rooms across the country between 2017 to 2022. In that timeframe, there were more than 230 deaths, according to the commission.
A micromobility device like a bike or a scooter having to share the road with cars and trucks is “a recipe for in the best case scenario discomfort and in the worst case scenario a crash that could lead to death,” Zipper said.
He suggested the solution is to build out dedicated infrastructure: things like bike lanes that are protected by concrete barriers. It’s something he said many major metropolitan areas are already doing.
“In the last fifteen years or so, you’ve seen a lot of cities in the US, and frankly in other parts of the world too, invest a lot of money and resources in creating safe spaces for people who want to use a scooter, or a bicycle, or any of these other versions of micromobility that we’re talking about,” Zipper said.
But it hasn’t been smooth sailing. Community boards have clashed with homeowners and businesses in cities across the country over the rollout of dedicated bike infrastructure, with detractors angry about losing valuable parking space. In one New York City neighborhood, residents even made lawn signs reading “No Bike Lanes” in big bold letters. Meanwhile, organizations like the NYC E-Vehicle Alliance have cropped up to advocate for micromobility regulation amid rising rates of injuries and deaths.
In the meantime, Joe Cohen of Infinite Machine said at least some of this is going to fall on riders practicing safe driving habits.
“Until our city looks more friendly toward small vehicles like this, we have to just be really aware,” he said. “And our job is to not only design really safe vehicles on the hardware side, but also to educate our riders about how to be defensive and to take their own safety seriously.”
The P1 retails for $10,000 — putting it firmly at the top end of the micromobility market.
“We know we’re more expensive than the competition and we did that intentionally because we did not want to cheap out or value-engineer this product,” Eddie Cohen said.
His brother put it a slightly different way.
“It’s cheaper than the cheapest cars,” Joe Cohen said.
A little lower down on the price ladder is the Motocompacto, an electric scooter Honda unveiled last year that retails for around $1,000. It doesn’t have nearly as much space as the Infinite Machine, and just a fraction of the electric range. But when it’s not being used, it folds up into a briefcase-like shape that can be stowed in the trunk of a car.
