Boeing

Sept. 23 (UPI) — U.S. defense, space and security will benefit from Boeing’s use of Palantir’s artificial intelligence-based Foundry platform to streamline its major production lines, officials said Tuesday.

Boeing and Palantir announced the collaborative effort on Tuesday and said it will improve the production of military aircraft, helicopters, satellites, spacecraft, missiles and weapons systems.

“Palantir is on the cutting edge when it comes to leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate getting critical products, services and capabilities in the hands of military operators,” said Steve Parker, Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security chief executive officer, in a news release on Tuesday.

“This collaboration is a natural fit that brings together two great companies with a common mission: supporting uniformed personnel in protecting freedom around the world.”

Denver-based Palantir also will provide Boeing with AI expertise and capabilities on several classified efforts that support the needs of its military clients during their most sensitive missions.

The collaborative effort will enable Boeing and Palantir to deliver dominant military capabilities that enable the United States to more effectively deter conflicts and defend the nation, Palantir’s head of defense, Mike Gallagher said.

“This partnership will turbocharge production and innovation, allowing Boeing and Palantir to bring cutting-edge technology to current and next-generation defense programs,” Gallagher added.

“America’s enemies aren’t slowing down,” he said. “Neither can we.”

Palantir in August received an up-to $10 billion, 10-year contract to improve the U.S. Army’s military readiness with AI.

Federal home mortgage firm Fannie Mae in May also contracted with Palantir to create an AI-powered unit to prevent and stop mortgage fraud.

The firm specializes in software development to better use AI to make rapid decisions in real time.

Impressive imagery showing military aircraft punching out flares is, by now, fairly familiar, but no less worth looking at. Much rarer, however, is to see a civilian airliner design doing the same thing. In this case, the Boeing 737 jetliner is in Polish Air Force service, but the captures are certainly highly unusual and bring attention to a lesser-known aspect of this aircraft, and other governmental and privately owned jets that are similarly outfitted with self-protection systems.

The photos in this story were shared with TWZ by Bartek Bera, whose work we have profiled before. Bartek photographed the 737 on August 28, when it was on its way to the rehearsal for the Radom Air Show, in east-central Poland. The aircraft is a 737-800 Boeing Business Jet 2 (BBJ2), with the tactical number 0112 and the name Ignacy Jan Paderewski, which was delivered to the Polish Air Force in 2021.

After joining a formation with the photo ship, the 737 began pumping out infrared decoys, part of its relatively extensive self-protection suite. It’s worth noting that flares are by no means an uncommon feature of Polish military air displays. In the past, we have looked at the use of photo-flash flares by the now-retired Polish Air Force Su-22 Fitter swing-wing ground-attack aircraft, and C-130 transports have also previously lit up Radom with pyrotechnic displays.

A Polish Air Force Su-22 Fitter drops photo-flash flares during the Radom Airshow in 2023:

While we asked the Polish Air Force for more details about the decoys, they were not willing to provide any information. However, based on open sources, the Polish Air Force 737s were outfitted with countermeasures dispensers prior to delivery.

As we’ve explored in the past, infrared countermeasures encompass a range of different flares with varying degrees of capability and complexity that cover different spectral regimes. At their most simple, these kinds of flares provide a heat source, which can be enough to defeat the infrared seeker head of a simpler missile. To defeat a more advanced threat, a countermeasure needs to be more closely paired to the host aircraft’s signature.

The self-protection equipment of at least one of the Polish Air Force 737s also includes a directed infrared countermeasures (DIRCM) system, in a canoe-shaped DIRCM fairing below the rear fuselage, while other examples of the aircraft display the mounting area for the same canoe. Reportedly, the DIRCM is the Israeli-made Elbit Systems J-MUSIC. This provides an additional degree of protection, using a turreted laser to blind and confuse the seeker on infrared-homing missiles.

Self-protection is enabled by the 737’s missile approach warning system (MAWS), sensors for which can be seen located around the fuselage in the photos here. The system senses the signature of the incoming missile and can facilitate automatic, semi-automatic, or a manual responsive course of action on how to defend against it, be it by flares or the DIRCM laser system, if equipped.

Overall, Polish Air Force 737s are notably well-equipped. These aircraft are also provided with a secure datalink, SATCOM, and UHF/VHF/HF radios for communications. Military-standard avionics include a TACAN navigation system, Mod 5 identification friend or foe (IFF), and GPS receivers with selective availability anti-spoofing modules (SAASM). The flight deck is fitted with head-up displays (HUD) and an enhanced flight vision system (EFVS), which provides the pilots with an improved view outside the cockpit. The 737s are equipped with specialized medical equipment for medical evacuation missions.

As for the Polish Air Force’s 737s, three of which are operated, their story is part of the service’s efforts to replace its fleet of Soviet-era aircraft with new Western equipment.

Previously, the Polish Air Force VIP fleet included a pair of Tupolev Tu-154M Careless trijets for transporting heads of state, as well as more than a dozen Yakovlev Yak-40 Codling regional jets for short-haul VIP work.

The retirement of both those Soviet-made types was expedited following the loss of a Tu-154M during a landing accident in 2010. This disaster, the causes of which remain controversial, resulted in the deaths of all 96 persons on board, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski. The remaining Tu-154M was retired in 2011, and the last Yak-40 was withdrawn in 2012.

The long-term successors for these aircraft are the Gulfstream G550 and the 737. Both types serve with the 1st Air Base Air Transport Squadron at in Warsaw. Ordered in 2017, the three Boeings comprise a single 737-800 built but never delivered to a Chinese regional airline, and a pair of new 737-800 BBJ2s, including the example seen here. The 737s are mainly used for transporting heads of state and high-ranking officials, hence their robust self-protection capabilities and overall high standard of equipment.

For their VIP role, the Polish Air Force 737s were outfitted with a special cabin, provided by Sabena Technics in Toulouse, France. This includes a cabin with seats for four passengers, two seats in a separate VIP compartment, 12 seats in business class, and 48 seats in economy class. There is also a rest compartment for the flight crew. 

Bartek’s dramatic imagery underscores the fact that VIP transports are also sprouting increasingly robust self-protection systems, including the kinds of flare dispensers that otherwise remain much better associated with frontline combat aircraft and tactical transport types.

You can check out more of Bartek’s photography here.

Contact the author: [email protected]

Sept. 12 (UPI) — More than 3,000 Boeing Co. machinists in St. Louis remain on strike after rejecting the latest contract offer from the aerospace company that seeks to end the strike that began on Aug. 4.

The defense contractor’s machinists rejected Boeing’s third contract offer on Friday and instead will continue the first walkout in nearly 30 years at the Missouri facility, CNBC reported.

“Boeing’s modified offer did not include a sufficient signing bonus relative to what other Boeing workers have received, or a raise in 401(k) benefits,” officials for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said in a statement, as reported by CNBC.

“The democratic vote underscores the determination of approximately 3,200 IAM Union members to continue their stand together until their voices are heard,” union officials said.

Friday’s vote nixed a proposed five-year contract that would have raised wages by 45% and paid each worker a $4,000 signing bonus, St. Louis Public Radio reported.

If approved, the St. Louis Boeing machinists would have had their average annual pay rise from $75,000 to $109,000, according to CNBC.

The contract offer would not have changed available vacation time or other benefits offered in two prior contract proposals.

The union said 57% of workers voted to reject the contract offer, which improved upon a prior offer that would have raised their wages by 20% and paid a $5,000 signing bonus.

Boeing Air Dominance Vice President Dan Gillian told CNBC that no additional contract talks are scheduled.

“We’ve made it clear the overall economic framework of our offer will not be changed,” Gillian said. “We have consistently adjusted the offer based on employer and union feedback to better address their concerns.”

Boeing is hiring workers to replace those who are on strike to help the firm meet rising demand for its products, which Gillian called its “contingency plan.”

The Boeing facility produces F-15 fighter jets and missile systems.

Boeing workers in Illinois also walked out on Aug. 4 after rejecting the company’s initial contract offer.

A recent computer-generated video from Boeing includes MQ-28 Ghost Bat drones with apparent receptacles on top of their fuselages to allow for aerial refueling from boom-equipped tankers. Mid-air refueling capability would extend the MQ-28’s reach and on-station time, but would also add complexity and cost to the design.

Boeing released the video in question, seen below, last week. It is primarily intended to tout the ability of the company’s new F-15EX Eagle II fighter to act as an airborne drone controller, a role the two-seat jet is well-suited to, as TWZ has been highlighting for years now. Boeing is now reportedly actively pitching MQ-28 to Poland in combination with a possible purchase of F-15EXs.

The Ghost Bat was first developed by Boeing’s subsidiary in Australia for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), but other customers, including the U.S. Navy, could be on the horizon. The U.S. Air Force has also made use of at least one MQ-28 in the past to support advanced uncrewed aircraft and autonomy development efforts.

As seen in screen captures from Boeing video at the top of this story and below, the MQ-28s are depicted with panel lines and markings on top of their fuselage that are consistent with receptacles for receiving fuel in mid-air via the boom method. The markings, in particular, are virtually identical to those seen on F-22 Raptors and F-35A Joint Strike Fighters.

The full scenario shown in the video involves the crews of the F-15EXs using the Ghost Bats as additional sensor nodes to help find and target a hostile air defense system. One of the Eagle IIs then launches an AGM-84H/K Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response (SLAM-ER) cruise missile, another Boeing product, to destroy the target.

In addition, the video presents the MQ-28s as each carrying a pair of AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) internally and being equipped with various sensors, including an infrared search and track system (IRST). At least two of the RAAF’s initial batch of MQ-28s have been seen equipped with an IRST sensor in the nose. In general, IRST sensors provide a valuable alternative and/or companion to radars, particularly when it comes to spotting and tracking stealthy aircraft and missiles. IRSTs are also immune to electronic warfare attacks and operate passively, meaning they don’t send signals that can alert an opponent to the fact that they have been detected and are being tracked. Drones with IRST sensors offer valuable additional passive forward sensor nodes that can hunt for threats and pass data to other platforms. For the MQ-28 (and other CCA-like drones) this would primarily be their controlling platform, which will often be operating to the rear of their locations.

It is interesting to note that real MQ-28s have similar, if not identical panels on top of the fuselage, but do not appear to have ever been seen with any markings pointing to it being linked to an aerial refueling capability. Whether or not Boeing has ever previously mentioned even the possibility of an aerial refueling capability for the Ghost Bat is unclear.

In response to queries from TWZ for more information about what is seen in the recent video, a Boeing spokesperson told us that “all I can share is that the video is conceptual in nature.”

Aerial refueling capability would extend the MQ-28’s overall range, which Boeing has said in the past is at least 2,300 miles (3,700 kilometers) on a single tank of gas. The ability to refuel in mid-air would also allow the drone to remain on station longer after arriving in a designated operating area. The uncrewed aircraft could break off to refuel and then return to station, or move to a different part of the battlespace, all without having to return to base first, as well.

Since a drone does not have a pilot that needs to drink, eat, sleep, and go relieve itself, aerial refueling capability could allow for a significant degree of additional persistence depending on the assigned mission. Airborne control of the drones could also be passed between crewed platforms rotating in and out of an operating area. All of this would open up new operational possibilities, as well as expand the number of potential launch and/or recovery locations, for air-to-air refueling-capable MQ-28s.

Australia, in particular, is present with challenges when it comes to projecting crewed or uncrewed airpower just by virtue of its location within the sprawling Indo-Pacific region. The “tyranny of distance” is a common refrain when discussing military operations in the Pacific, in general.

The RAAF would at least have a basic capacity to gas-up future MQ-28s with aerial refueling receptacles via its boom-equipped Airbus A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transports (MRTT), which are locally designated as KC-30As. Airbus has also notably been working on improvements to the core MRTT design to enable the safe refueling of uncrewed aircraft via the boom method.

MQ-28s with aerial refueling receptacles could also be of interest to other air arms with boom-equipped tankers. U.S. Air Force officials have talked about aerial refueling capability in the past in the context of the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) drone program. Air-to-air refueling is notably seen as one way to help balance range and performance requirements.

All of this, in turn, has raised questions about how much more complex and costly it might be to add this capability to any CCA-type design. It has also prompted discussions about how fielding large fleets of aerial refueling-capable drones might impact already strained tanker fleets. The Air Force has separately been exploring novel options for increasing its overall aerial refueling capacity, including boom-equipped buddy refueling stores small enough for tactical jets like the F-15 to carry. An uncrewed aircraft like the MQ-28 would sip relatively small amounts of fuel compared to a medium or heavy crewed fighter, as well.

It’s also worth remembering here that providing organic defense for increasingly vulnerable, but critical tankers and other support aircraft has long been a mission envisioned for the MQ-28, as well as various other ‘loyal wingman’ type drones. Uncrewed aircraft that can be refueled in flight could help increase the persistence of that defensive screen. In other words, tankers and surveillance aircraft can bring their own uncrewed combat air patrol with them and control them directly.

If Boeing can alter the MQ-28 design, specifically, for refueling via boom, the Ghost Bat might also be adaptable to receiving fuel in mid-air via the probe-and-drogue method. This would increase the total number of potential tankers that could refuel MQ-28s. Boeing has previously shown a render of a derivative of the MQ-25 Stingray tanker drone, which it is developing for the U.S. Navy, with a refueling probe. The Navy has expressed a “strong interest” in the Ghost Bat, or a variant or derivative thereof, potentially for future carrier-based use. Boeing has pitched a carrier-capable version of the design at least to the United Kingdom in the past.

It is important to remember here that extensive work has been done in the unclassified realm to develop the technologies necessary for the refueling of drones via crewed tankers using the boom-and-receptacle and probe-and-drogue methods, including various real-world demonstrations. Drones refueling other drones, as well as other crewed aircraft, using probe-and-drogue systems, has also already been proven out by Boeing (through the MQ-25 program) and others. The possibility has been raised in the past that the U.S. military has actually fielded uncrewed aircraft capable of recieving fuel in mid-air, at least on a limited level in the classified realm, but this remains unconfirmed.

Boeing has otherwise been betting big on the MQ-28, including with major investments to expand its capacity to produce the drones in Australia. The RAAF has already received eight Ghost Bats in a Block 1 prototype configuration, and Boeing is on contract to deliver at least three more improved Block 2 types that are seen as a pathway to an operational capability. Australian officials have openly discussed the possibility of acquiring further MQ-28 variants down the line.

Just last week, Boeing announced a number of RAAF testing milestones it says were achieved before the end of June, including “autonomous behaviors and mission execution,” “multi-ship operations to provide combat mass,” and “data fusion and sharing data between multiple MQ-28 aircraft and transmission of that data to a crewed platform.” Back in June, Boeing had already disclosed a successful demonstration of the ability of RAAF personnel aboard an E-7 Wedgetail airborne early warning and control aircraft to direct MQ-28s to engage an aerial threat. Once again, this could help pave the way for large support aircraft bringing along their own defensive drone patrols.

Boeing also said the MQ-28s built to date have now completed 150 hours of testing, with another 20,000+ hours of testing of the design in virtual environments.

“The RAAF set the task of proving the first four steps in the Air Combat chain for the MQ-28, and we have accomplished that sooner than anticipated,” Glen Ferguson, Boeing’s MQ-28 global program director, said in a statement today. “Completing this work early allows us to accelerate the next phases of development – engage and assess – with an air-to-air weapon shot planned for later this year or in early 2026.”

Exactly when the RAAF might begin flying MQ-28s in any configuration operationally is unclear. Australia’s National Security Committee is expected to make a decision about whether or not to proceed with additional Ghost Bat purchases before the end of the year, according to a report last week from Aviation Week.

Altogether, while the idea of an MQ-28 capable of being refueled in flight may just be a concept now, it could well prove to be an attractive addition to the still evolving Ghost Bat design.

Contact the author: [email protected]

It’s been seven months since I looked up from my desk here in The Times’ El Segundo office and saw smoke roiling over the horizon.

The sky behind the billowing dove-gray clouds was still blue and clear. Across the county, people who would not live to see the next sunrise still watered their plants and chatted with neighbors and went about their business. I snapped a photo of the Palisades fire, unaware that I was looking at an entity already in the process of changing Los Angeles irrevocably.

The Eaton fire erupted hours later. By the following afternoon there was no distinction between smoke and sky, just that acrid, asphyxiating gray that made eyes water and chests tighten throughout Los Angeles County.

For days, we breathed in each other’s lives. Flames took the contents of our homes — photographs, plastic toys, car batteries, attic insulation, every coat of paint and varnish applied across the decades — and reduced them to microscopic particles that wafted across the region, went into our windpipes, leached into our blood and settled in our brains.

At work I wrote obituaries, sorted through the medical examiner’s database, and listened to grieving people describe their loved ones’ finest qualities and heartbreaking final hours.

A total of 31 people died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the Palisades and Eaton fires. The remains of the last known victim, 74-year-old Juan Francisco Espinoza, were discovered just weeks ago in the wreckage of his Altadena home.

Smoke from the Palisades fire, seen from the window of the L.A. Times’ office in El Segundo, on Jan. 7.

(Corinne Purtill / Los Angeles Times)

The disaster’s true toll is likely far higher. Just this week, a research team compared the number of deaths Los Angeles County logged between Jan. 5 and Feb. 1 to those counted in previous, non-pandemic years. This year’s count was much higher than expected. Researchers estimate that the fires led to the deaths of an additional 440 people in January alone, through interrupted healthcare and hazardous air quality.

It’s the beginning of a long reckoning with the potential health consequences of the toxic pollutants that the fires unleashed into our air, soil and water.

It will almost certainly be impossible to attribute any individual case of cancer, dementia or cardiovascular failure — to name a few of the health issues associated with exposure to wildfire smoke — to a person’s proximity to the L.A. fires.

Similarly, it’s impossible to pinpoint the degree to which climate change exacerbates any individual natural disaster. But it’s highly likely that a chaotic climate contributed to the intensity of January’s firestorms.

Two extraordinarily wet years produced an explosion of vegetation that dried out over an unusually warm summer and unusually dry winter. The region was a tinderbox, and when the Santa Ana winds hit with the force of a hurricane, ignitions turned quickly into uncontrolled catastrophes.

In the last decade, wildfires have unleashed enough fine particulate pollution to reverse years’ worth of hard-won improvements under the Clean Air Act and other antipollution measures.

These itty-bitty particles of soot, measuring 2.5 microns or less in diameter, are fine enough to cross the barriers between the outer branches of our lungs and the blood, and the blood and the brain.

Such particles can originate from vehicle exhaust, construction projects, campfires and even volcanic eruptions. But wildfires are a particularly insidious source.

Compared with other sources, wildfire smoke “contains a higher fraction of ultrafine particles — particles 25 times smaller than PM2.5 — that can move directly from the nose into the brain, potentially damaging brain cells and eventually leading to dementia,” said Joan Casey, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Washington.

“The other thing that differs is how people are exposed to wildfire smoke. Unlike other sources of PM2.5, [in which] exposure might be relatively constant throughout the year, people are often exposed to a few days of extreme wildfire smoke annually,” Casey said. “Think about it this way: it might be fine to drink one glass of wine per day, but some of these wildfire smoke events are like drinking four bottles of wine in an evening, which can overwhelm the body’s defense and harm health.”

That punch may land particularly heavy when the smoke comes from urban fires like January’s disaster.

Casey pointed to a paper that came out earlier this year looking at the relative toxicity of different types of wildfire smoke.

That research team found that smoke originating from fires that burned buildings had higher concentrations of lead, nickel and other carcinogenic substances than smoke from fires that burned primarily organic material.

After examining air pollution data captured at 700 air quality monitors over a 15 year-period, the researchers found that the share of pollutants that could be attributed to wildfire “significantly increased over time,” they wrote, “with wildfire-attributed concentrations of multiple carcinogenic metals significantly higher by the end of our sample.”

The team estimated that exposure to wildfire smoke may have caused 47 additional cases of cancer in the U.S. between 2006 and 2020 that would not have otherwise developed.

Momentous as a cancer diagnosis is for any individual, in the context of the national population this is a minuscule and statistically insignificant increase in context, they pointed out — there are more than 1 million new cancer diagnoses in the U.S. per year.

But most of that wildfire smoke was generated by “traditional” wildfires that mostly burn trees, brush and plants. We don’t know what the burden will be from increasing exposure to incinerated batteries, machinery, plastic and cars, said Emma Krasovich Southworth, a doctoral candidate at Stanford and co-author of the study.

“Given that we’re seeing more urban fires . . . we would expect that this risk to public health could change,” she said. “Even though [wildfire smoke] hasn’t added a significant cancer burden in the past, that’s not to say it won’t in the future.”

As anyone affected by January’s fires in any capacity knows, disasters of this magnitude also create an enormous amount of acute and chronic stress, which itself alters brain structure and function.

In a paper exploring the potential health effects of the fires, Casey and colleagues noted multiple ways that the upheaval and displacement they caused could contribute to ongoing mental health issues.

“Those evacuating face extreme stress and impacts on mental health, even years after the events,” they wrote. “Even when homes are not damaged or destroyed, evacuation disrupts multiple dimensions of people’s lives, including work, education, community gatherings, and health care access.”

This column looks often at the economic costs and consequences of a changing climate. There is also a toll our brains and bodies, a physical burden we all take on when the environment falls apart.

L.A.’s fires have reshaped the city. It is also possible that they have triggered changes in our very cells whose consequences we can’t yet see, and will become apparent to us long after the last lot has been cleared.

“I think [the fires have] the potential to be devastating to human health, especially over the long term,” Krasovich Southworth said. “We might see the immediate uptick of certain things that we know happen when exposed to [fire], like asthma or other respiratory issues. But I think the longer-term exposures to these chemicals . . . could be really devastating to the community.”

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

Thousands of US workers hit the picket line at three plants in Illinois and Missouri.

Thousands of workers at Boeing plants across the United States that develop military aircraft and weapons have gone on strike.

The strike began Monday at Boeing facilities in St Louis and St Charles, Missouri, as well as Mascoutah, Illinois, after failed negotiations over wage increases and other provisions of a new contract.

About 3,200 local members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers voted Sunday to reject a modified four-year labour agreement, the union said.

“IAM District 837 members build the aircraft and defense systems that keep our country safe,” Sam Cicinelli, the general vice president of the union’s Midwest division, said in a statement. “They deserve nothing less than a contract that keeps their families secure and recognizes their unmatched expertise.”

The vote followed a weeklong cooling-off period after the workers rejected an earlier proposed contract, which included a 20 percent wage increase over four years and $5,000 ratification bonuses.

Boeing warned over the weekend that it anticipated the strike after workers rejected its latest offer, which did not further boost the proposed wage hike. However, the proposal removed a scheduling provision that would have affected workers’ ability to earn overtime pay.

“We’re disappointed our employees rejected an offer that featured 40 percent average wage growth and resolved their primary issue on alternative work schedules,” said Dan Gillian, Boeing Air Dominance vice president and general manager, and senior St Louis site executive.

“We are prepared for a strike and have fully implemented our contingency plan to ensure our non-striking workforce can continue supporting our customers.”

Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security business accounts for more than one-third of the company’s revenue. But Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told analysts last week that the impact from a strike by the machinists who build fighter jets, weapons systems and the US Navy’s first carrier-based unmanned aircraft would be much less than a walkout last year by 33,000 workers who assemble the company’s commercial jetliners.

“The order of magnitude of this is much, much less than what we saw last fall,” Ortberg said. “So we’ll manage through this. I wouldn’t worry too much about the implications of the strike.”

The 2024 strike shut down Boeing’s factories in Washington state for more than seven weeks at a bleak time for the company. Boeing came under several federal investigations last year after a door plug blew off a 737 Max plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

The Federal Aviation Administration put limits on Boeing plane production that it said would last until the agency felt confident about manufacturing quality safeguards at the company. The door-plug incident renewed concerns about the safety of the 737 Max. Two of the planes crashed less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.

Ortberg told analysts that the company has slowly worked its way up to an FAA-set 737 Max production cap of 38 per month and expects to ask regulators later this year for permission to go beyond it.

Last week, Boeing reported that its second-quarter revenue had improved and its losses had narrowed. The company lost $611m in the second quarter, compared to a loss of $1.44bn during the same period last year.

Boeing’s stock tumbled on the news of the strike. Trending downwards earlier in the day, it has since been trending upwards, but is still below the market open by 0.26 percent as of 12:30pm ET (16:30 GMT).

Aug. 4 (UPI) — Three Boeing defense plants face a strike as 3,200 hourly machinists walked off their jobs.

Members of the International Association of Machinists voted to strike at about 1 a.m. EDT Monday.

“3,200 highly-skilled IAM Union members at Boeing went on strike at midnight because enough is enough,” the union wrote on X.

IAM Midwest Territory General Vice President Sam Cicinelli on Sunday urged a new contract for the workers.

“IAM District 837 members build the aircraft and defense systems that keep our country safe. They deserve nothing less than a contract that keeps their families secure and recognizes their unmatched expertise,” Cicinelli said.

The striking members work at facilities in St. Louis and St. Charles, Mo., and Mascoutah, Ill., the union said.

On July 27, they voted to reject a four-year contract proposal by the company.

“We’re disappointed our employees rejected an offer that featured 40% average wage growth and resolved their primary issue on alternative work schedules,” Boeing said in a statement on Sunday, titled “Last, best and final offer.” “We are prepared for a strike and have fully implemented our contingency plan to ensure our non-striking workforce can continue supporting our customers.”

The workers on strike build and maintain fighter jets, including the F-15 and F/A-18 models. They also build the T-7A Red Hawk trainer and the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned refueler. The F-47 stealth fighter jet, the Pentagon’s next-generation fighter plane, is planned to be built at a Boeing plant in the St. Louis area, though the company hasn’t said which plant will build it or when production will begin. Boeing also operates some nonunion plants in the area.

Boeing Defense, Space and Security unit has recorded nearly $11 billion in losses from late 2021 through the end of 2024. Pentagon contracts that made the company responsible for cost overruns, including two new Air Force One jets, are the main cause. But this year, the unit has made profits.

In the Boeing earnings call last week, CEO Kelly Ortberg said the company can weather the costs of the strike. He said it would be far less than the cost of last year’s strike of 33,000 commercial plane unit workers.

“The order of magnitude of this is much, much less than what we saw last fall,” Ortberg said. “I wouldn’t worry too much about the implications of the strike. We’ll manage our way through that.”

Two scenes. Two storytellers. Two visions for a climate-altered American West.

On an overcast spring morning, I hopped a low metal fence off a lonely dirt road in the Nevada desert, following botanist Naomi Fraga. She assured me she’d done this before — these were public lands, after all. We were 100 miles east of Yosemite, out in the middle of nowhere, except I’d long since learned there’s no such thing as nowhere. The desert may look barren, but its mountains and valleys teem with life. And precious metals.

Fraga led me up a small hill, the soil chalky-white and rich with lithium, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries for electric cars. We moved slowly, not wanting to trample any endangered wildflowers.

Wait, were those the flowers? The Tiehm’s buckwheat I’d come hundreds of miles to see?

“Very tiny,” Fraga confirmed. “When it flowers, its flower stalks might come about 4 or 5 inches high.”

“It snows here in this elevation zone,” she added, roughly 6,000 feet above sea level. “It’s a very cold desert, and when it’s cold, Tiehm’s buckwheat is just lying in wait, waiting for spring.”

For a flower that’s spurred high-stakes litigation, detailed scientific study and global news coverage, it was pretty ugly, at least in its dormant winter state. The clumps of gray-green buckwheat looked almost like mold.

Clumps of Tiehm’s buckwheat near the planned Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine.

(Sammy Roth / Los Angeles Times)

For Fraga, the flower’s current appearance is beside the point. Tiehm’s buckwheat doesn’t grow anywhere else in the world — just here, across three square miles of Esmeralda County. She’s enthralled by its role in an ecosystem of pollinators and bighorn sheep. She’s awestruck by its ability to survive winter snow and 120-degree heat.

“I just have an enormous amount of respect for the organisms that make this their home,” she said. “I feel like it brings for a reverence for harsh living, and ways in which life will find a way.”

The question now: Can Tiehm’s buckwheat survive a lithium mine?

Fraga doesn’t think so. Bernard Rowe disagrees.

The day after I met Fraga, Rowe took me to the same area. We drove down the dirt road past the metal fence, to a spectacular basin where his employer, Australia-based Ioneer, is preparing to dig for lithium.

“The good thing is, this is a natural amphitheater, and it is hidden from really everywhere,” Rowe said. “You’ve got the ring of volcanic rocks that completely surrounds this basin.”

Sight lines don’t matter to an endangered flower. But contrary to claims made by conservationists, Rowe said the Rhyolite Ridge mine won’t drive Tiehm’s buckwheat to extinction. He noted that mining activities won’t touch any subpopulations of Tiehm’s buckwheat — although the quarry could come as close as a dozen feet.

“We had to make sure we put buffer zones. We had to map all the plants,” he said.

So who’s right?

Bernard Rowe, managing director at Ioneer, discusses the company’s planned lithium mine in Esmeralda County, Nevada.

(Jonathan Shifflett)

It would be easy to make the company look like the bad guy. After all, here’s a profit-seeking foreign corporation seeking to exploit America’s public lands in the name of environmental progress. Potentially at the expense of an endangered species. With only a band of hardy activists standing in the way.

It’s a good story. Arguably an accurate story. And yet…

And yet the climate crisis makes everything complicated. To phase out oil and natural gas — whose combustion fills the air with deadly pollution and fuels devastating storms, wildfires and heat waves — we’ll need enormous amounts of lithium, for electric vehicle batteries and solar energy storage to keep the lights on after dark. Most of the world’s lithium is currently produced in Australia and China, and at destructive evaporation ponds in Chile.

Those geopolitical dynamics help explain why lithium mining has garnered bipartisan support even as President Trump kills other clean energy projects. The Biden administration approved Rhyolite Ridge last year, then backed the developer with a $996-million loan. The Trump administration has let both decisions stand.

Already, Rowe estimated, the U.S. consumes 100,000 tons of lithium carbonate per year for electric car batteries.

“By the time you add in grid batteries, hand tools, recreational vehicles, cellphones … it will soon be hundreds of thousands of tons,” he said. “And into the future, it’ll be 1 million tons of domestic demand.”

Let’s say the Rhyolite Ridge’s critics are right, and the mine would, in fact, annihilate Tiehm’s buckwheat. Is that a reasonable price to pay for ditching oil-burning cars and shutting down gas-fired power plants?

The answer might depend on your vantage point.

Botanist Naomi Fraga examines Tiem’s buckwheat on a hill near the planned site of the Rhyolite Ridge lithium mine.

(Jonathan Shifflett)

Take Fraga. She was born and raised in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley and is now a botany professor at Claremont Graduate University. She started doing research in Nevada a few years before the COVID-19 pandemic. She sees Rhyolite Ridge as part of a landscape so unique it might be a national monument were it in California.

Rowe, meanwhile, grew up in an Australian farm town. He was inspired to study geology by a university lecturer’s tales of travel and adventure, which led him to the mining industry. He’s spent 20 years splitting his time between Sydney and Nevada, where he helped identify the value in Rhyolite Ridge’s mineral deposits.

Part of the value is lithium. The rest is boron, a durable, heat-resistant metalloid. Rowe could riff for hours about the vast array of products that require boron, including steel alloys, carpet fibers, car parts, wind turbine magnets and many types of glass, including cookware, windshields, TV screens and thermal insulation.

Right now, Turkey is the world’s top boron producer by far. Rhyolite Ridge was a rare find.

“Most other metal deposits — copper, gold — they can be quite young, in terms of a few million years old. Or they can be hundreds of millions, even a billion years old,” Rowe said. “You don’t find old boron deposits.”

For Rowe, Rhyolite Ridge is treasure buried in plain sight. For Fraga, it’s just the latest example of callous outsiders attempting to exploit Nevada’s public lands — a history that began with silver mining and continues with housing development, solar farms and nuclear waste storage. Nevada is already home to America’s only active lithium mine, not far from Rhyolite Ridge. The Thacker Pass mine is also under construction near the Oregon border.

Angelenos driving electric vehicles ought to think about how their choices affect Nevada, Fraga suggested.

“There’s a real tension there, where we need to avert the worst of the climate crisis. But in doing so, we can cause real harm to ecosystems,” she said.

So how do we resolve that tension?

Tiehm’s buckwheat in bloom.

(Naomi Fraga)

I put off writing this column for three months because I didn’t have a good answer. How could I defend the mine when it might doom an endangered species? Yet how could I condemn it when we need lithium, and when so few large-scale clean energy projects don’t face environmental conflicts?

As far as the sparring parties are concerned, the facts speak for themselves. Ioneer points to a biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service concluding that its mine is “not likely to jeopardize the continued existence” of Tiehm’s buckwheat or “result in the destruction or adverse modification of its critical habitat.”

Conservationists counter that when the Fish and Wildlife Service declared the flower an endangered species in 2022, the agency described “mineral exploration and development” as one of the “greatest threats” to the flower. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Western Shoshone Defense Project and Great Basin Resource Watch sued federal officials over their approval of the mine last year, contending they rushed the environmental review.

It’s possible we’ll never know who’s right. Ioneer is scrambling to secure new funding after the South African firm Sibanye-Stillwater — which was supposed to invest $490 million — backed out this year amid falling global lithium prices. Ioneer said this month it wouldn’t start construction until at least March. If and when the company is ready to start digging, the groups in the lawsuit could ask the judge to block construction.

But whatever happens at Rhyolite Ridge, these types of questions aren’t going away — especially in the American West, where public lands have traditionally supplied big cities with energy, water and food. We’ll need to be more thoughtful than ever about how we use land. We’ll need to get comfortable evaluating trade-offs.

In an ideal world, we’d never have to choose between lithium mines and lovely flowers. Or at least, we’d find ways to resolve these types of conflicts amicably — and quickly, because climate chaos is coming fast.

Sometimes it’s possible. Alas, sometimes we’ll have to choose.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Amid a string of setbacks for clean energy — tariffs, the Trump administration, Tesla’s declining sales numbers — California officials delivered a big win last month, approving the nation’s largest solar-plus-storage project.

Planned for 14 square miles in Fresno County, the project will provide up to 1,150 megawatts of solar energy and 4,600 megawatts-hours of battery storage. Dubbed the Darden project, it should be able to power 850,000 homes after dark. The developer, Intersect Power, will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in property taxes over time.

And because Darden will be built on retired farmland in an area running low on water, rather than pristine public lands in the desert, there are few environmental conflicts. No Joshua trees to chop down or endangered tortoises to displace. An easy place to build renewable energy and slow the climate crisis.

So why are many farmers in water-scarce parts of California fighting the solar industry?

State lawmakers are under pressure from Big Ag to kill or rewrite legislation that would make it easier to convert farmland to solar production. The Legislature rejected a similar bill last year, despite looming regulations that will require Central Valley farmers to pump less groundwater.

In southeastern California, meanwhile, the powerful Imperial Irrigation District — which controls more Colorado River water than the entire state of Arizona — voted this month to oppose further solar development on Imperial Valley farmland, even as a climate-fueled megadrought drains the river’s major reservoirs.

Again, why are farmers gumming up the clean energy transition?

“Agricultural land is very productive, and it’s something that we want to protect,” said J.B. Hamby, vice chair of the Imperial Irrigation District’s board of directors. “There’s ample opportunity to develop solar in other places.”

“One in 6 jobs in the Imperial Valley is directly tied to agriculture,” he added.

The California Aqueduct runs between farmland and a solar plant in Kern County, carrying water south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Big Ag groups are making a similar argument in the Central Valley, where Assembly Bill 1156 would boost solar by weakening a law called the Williamson Act, which is designed to keep lands in crop production.

“The bill removes that smart approach to land-use decisions, where you’re [putting] solar on the least-productive agricultural lands,” said Peter Ansel, director of policy advocacy for the California Farm Bureau Federation.

On the surface, those talking points sound fair. But they’re not the whole story.

State officials need to get real about the enormous amounts of renewable energy we still need to build to replace deadly, destructive fossil fuels — an estimated 60 gigawatts of solar, wind and battery capacity in the next decade (and twice that much by 2045). For context, California has never used more than 52 gigawatts of electricity at one time before. The huge jump is partly due to the expected rise in electric vehicles and data centers.

Thus far, many of the biggest solar plants in the western U.S. have been built on public lands in the desert, where the Obama and Biden administrations encouraged renewable energy. But conservation activists have increasingly raised concerns over harm to wildlife habitat and endangered species, slowing development.

To Shannon Eddy — executive director of the Large-scale Solar Assn., a California trade group — promoting more solar on farmland is an obvious response. That’s one reason her group is sponsoring AB 1156.

“We have to add more clean energy to the grid than we have ever added in the history of the electricity grid,” she said. “And somehow we have to find a way to look at this through a shared lens, understanding that if we are not able to reduce climate emissions by 50% globally by 2030, we’re toast.”

I wouldn’t go quite so far. If we fail to cut climate pollution nearly in half by 2030 — which scientists say is needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels — the world won’t suddenly end.

But heat waves, wildfires, storms and droughts will keep getting worse. Which is why we should do everything we can to avoid that outcome. Like trading some productive farmland for some badly needed clean energy.

A smoldering home during the Eaton fire on Jan. 8.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

The details of AB 1156 are complicated, but the results would be simple.

Across California, 16 million acres — about half the state’s farms and ranches — are protected by the Williamson Act. The 1965 law offers lower property taxes for landowners who agree to keep their holdings in agricultural use or open space. For a grower to renege on a Williamson Act contract — for instance, if they want to sell to a home developer — they have to pay a big fee, or else wait out the duration of their contract.

It’s a good deal for farmers — and, historically, a good way to prevent suburban sprawl.

The problem arises when a solar company finds a farmer who wants to stop cultivating some or all of their lands, but those lands still have years remaining on a Williamson Act contract. Solar companies work on thin margins, and Williamson Act cancellation fees can derail otherwise viable projects. That’s especially true now that Congress and President Trump have eviscerated federal incentives for renewable energy.

AB 1156 would let growers in water-stressed areas suspend their contracts to enable solar development, without anyone paying the fee. The solar company would pay full property taxes. Local officials would need to sign off.

And again: If less water inevitably means lost farmland, why not incentivize solar?

“You’re going to be restoring revenue to not only the landowner, but also to the local economy,” Eddy said.

Conservation activist Kim Delfino, president of consulting firm Earth Advocacy, often finds herself at loggerheads with the solar industry over large-scale projects in the desert. But she and one of her clients, the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, support AB 1156 — even though there are burrowing owls and a handful of other sensitive critters that have come to depend on agricultural lands.

“There’s no free lunch,” Delfino told me. “Anytime you put a project somewhere, it’s probably going to have some kind of environmental or habitat impacts.”

And that’s the crux of the challenge: There are lots of reasons to say no to clean energy in your community, even as we all collectively need it. Change is hard. It’s no surprise that farmers embracing solar are being drowned out by their neighbors who want to preserve agrarian communities as they’ve existed for a century.

Farmworkers weed rows of romaine lettuce outside Holtville, Calif., in the Imperial Valley.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

If California wants to soften opposition to solar, it should try to support farmworkers who see solar as a threat to their livelihoods — even if climate-driven water shortages would have threatened their jobs regardless.

Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San José State, recently co-wrote a paper on solar and environmental justice in the Imperial Valley. He said state officials should require solar companies to pay for more “community benefits” to make up for lost jobs, but not such high fees that companies stop building.

“It’s not a huge, profitable industry. They struggle,” Mulvaney acknowledged.

It’s hard to know what the future holds for Imperial County, which already has 13,000 acres of solar on farmland. The county supervisors are responsible for approving solar projects, not the irrigation district.

Here’s hoping the supervisors recognize that some change is inevitable. Even if they don’t approve every project, they could prod developers toward marginal farmland with lower-quality soil.

In the Central Valley, conditions are more likely to hinge on AB 1156, which passed the Assembly last month and is moving through the Senate. Lawmakers should send it to Gov. Gavin Newsom despite opposition from the farm bureau and other agricultural groups that are demanding amendments.

The farm bureau has argued that letting landowners out of their Williamson Act contracts except under extremely narrow circumstances would be unfair. Were it not for the climate crisis, that argument might have merit.

The thing is, there is a climate crisis. California should act like it.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

In an early episode of the TV series “Lost,” the plane crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island are running low on water. A fight breaks out, until emerging leader Jack Shephard admonishes everyone to work together.

“If we can’t live together, we’re gonna die alone,” he says.

California lawmakers contemplating our climate future ought to take that lesson to heart.

Senate Bill 540 would help establish a regional electricity market capable of tying together the American West’s three dozen independent power grids. Supporters say it would smooth the flow of solar and wind power from the sunny, windy landscapes where they’re produced most cheaply to the cities where they’re most needed. It would help California keep the lights on without fossil fuels, and without driving up utility bills.

That may sound straightforward, but the bill has bitterly divided environmentalists. Welcome to the Wild West of energy policy.

Some consider regional power-trading a crucial market-based tool for accelerating climate progress. Others see it as a plot by greedy energy companies to enrich themselves.

Those divides didn’t stop the Senate from unanimously passing SB 540. But amendments demanded by skeptical lawmakers are now threatening to derail the bill in the Assembly — even as Gov. Gavin Newsom threw his weight behind the concept Wednesday.

Critics warn that SB 540 would result in California yielding control of its power grid to out-of-state officials and the Trump administration, who could force Californians to pay for coal-fired electricity from Utah and Wyoming. They also worry about market manipulation driving up electric rates.

Those fears are understandable. I also think they’re misguided.

California by itself can’t stop the planet from heating up. The Golden State’s decades-long campaign to slow the wildfires, floods and heat waves of the climate crisis has been predicated on the conviction that eventually, other states and nations will follow along — even oil bastions and MAGA hothouses.

In other words: If we can’t live together, we’re gonna die alone.

Fortunately, even in the wake of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” gutting clean energy incentives, solar and wind power are still cheaper than planet-warming coal and fossil gas. Which is why Michael Wara, a Stanford energy and climate scholar, isn’t worried that SB 540 will leave Californians drowning in dirty power. In a regional market, solar and wind will usually outcompete coal and gas.

“Any energy source that requires fuel to operate is more expensive than an energy source that doesn’t,” he said.

The 20-megawatt Maricopa West solar project in California’s Kern County.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

California also needs to prove that a grid powered entirely by clean energy is affordable and reliable. The state’s rising electric rates are already a big concern. And although the grid has been stable the last few years, thanks to batteries that store solar for after dark, keeping the lights on with more and more renewables might get harder.

Regional market advocates make a strong case that interstate cooperation would help.

For instance, a market would help California more smoothly access Pacific Northwest hydropower, already a key energy source during heat waves. It would also give California easier access to low-cost winds from New Mexico and Wyoming. Best of all, that wind is often blowing strong just as the sun sets along the Pacific.

Another benefit: Right now, California often generates more solar than it can use during certain hours of the day, forcing solar farms to shut down — or pay other states to take the extra power. With a regional market, California could sell excess solar to other states, keeping utility bills down.

“This is about lowering costs,” said Robin Everett, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

When I wrote about a past regional market proposal in 2017, the Sierra Club was opposed. It believed a regional market would throw an economic lifeline to Utah and Wyoming coal plants owned by Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp company by giving them access to new markets — including California — to sell their power.

Eight years later, things are different. High costs are driving coal toward extinction. Solar and wind cost even less. Sierra Club staff now say California should be less worried about opening new markets to coal and more worried about averting blackouts or high utility bills that could trigger an anti-renewables backlash.

“Otherwise we’re going to see more and more gas, and a push to keep coal online,” Everett said.

But here’s where the politics get tricky.

Although the Sierra Club endorsed the Pathways Initiative — the detailed regional market plan on which SB 540 is based — it hasn’t endorsed the bill. That’s because many of the club’s volunteer leaders still hate the idea.

They’re not alone.

SB 540’s opponents include the Center for Biological Diversity, Food and Water Watch and Consumer Watchdog. (Full disclosure: My father-in-law, an energy lawyer, has advocated against the bill.) Eight chapters of 350.org and 73 chapters of progressive group Indivisible stand opposed. So does the Environmental Working Group.

On the flip side, supporters include Climate Hawks Vote, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy, the Union of Concerned Scientists and two chapters of 350.org.

Loretta Lynch, who led the state’s Public Utilities Commission during the early-2000s energy crisis, thinks SB 540 would open the door for more market manipulation, giving energy companies legally sanctioned tools to thwart climate goals and force Californians to pay for expensive fossil fuels.

Her warnings have resonated with activists frustrated by California’s investor-owned utilities, which keep raising electric rates and recently helped persuade officials to slash rooftop solar incentives. Indeed, SB 540’s supporters include Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and trade groups for major power producers.

“They want no guardrails or limits on how they can fleece California,” Lynch said.

Montana’s coal-fired Colstrip power plant.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

It’s a compelling narrative. But most energy experts who have studied the bill aren’t convinced.

For one thing, electricity sales have changed dramatically since the energy crisis, with more oversight and fewer last-minute trades limiting the potential for shenanigans. Unlike with past regional market proposals, California would retain control of its grid operator, with only a few functions delegated to a regional entity. And California’s grid is already subject to federal regulation, meaning Trump could try undermining state policy at any time.

Labor attorney Marc Joseph, who helped lead the charge against previous regional market bills, described Lynch’s talking points as “good arguments against a thing that is no longer being proposed.”

“We’re in a different place because it’s a fundamentally different thing,” Joseph said.

Joseph represents the politically powerful International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. After years of fighting regional markets, IBEW is now a vocal supporter. What changed, Joseph said, is that SB 540 would safeguard state climate goals, thus making it a valuable tool to advance solar and wind farms — and create good-paying jobs.

Even with IBEW’s support, though, it’s not clear if SB 540 will reach Newsom’s desk.

To secure support in the Senate in May, Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park), the bill’s author, added amendments to assuage concerns about California giving up too much control of its grid. Ironically, many of the bill’s key backers now say they’re opposed unless the amendments are removed or tweaked.

Why would they say that? Because California is the biggest electricity user in the West, and other states won’t join a regional market unless they’re confident California will participate — and the amendments would make it easier for the Golden State to bail. Out-of-state utilities don’t want to waste time and money committing themselves to a California-led market only to lose California, and thus many of the economic benefits.

That’s especially true because those utilities have another option. Arkansas-based Southwest Power Pool, which operates the electric grid across much of the central U.S., is recruiting Western utilities to its own regional market. Already, utilities based in Arizona, Colorado and the Pacific Northwest have agreed to join.

Arkansas isn’t leading the West to a clean energy future. California can try — or it can close itself off to the world.

Living together is no guarantee. But dying alone is definitely worse.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

India’s aviation agency tells airlines to investigate fuel switch locks on several Boeing models, including 787s and 737s.

India has ordered its airlines to examine fuel switches on several Boeing models following last month’s deadly Air India crash.

India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Monday said it asked the airlines to investigate fuel switch locks on several Boeing models, including 787s and 737s.

The precautionary moves by India and several other countries came despite the plane maker and the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) telling airlines and regulators in recent days that the fuel switch locks on Boeing jets were safe.

The locks have come under scrutiny following the June 12 crash of an Air India jet, which killed some 260 people – the worst such disaster on Indian soil.

A preliminary report on the crash by Indian authorities did not offer any conclusions or apportion blame for the disaster, but indicated that one pilot asked the other why he cut off fuel, and the second pilot responded that he had not.

The report noted a 2018 advisory from the FAA, which recommended, but did not mandate, operators of several Boeing models, including the 787, to inspect the locking feature of fuel cutoff switches to ensure they could not be moved accidentally.

In recent days, the Air India Group started checking the locking mechanism on the fuel switches of its 787 and 737 fleets and has discovered no problems yet, a source familiar with the matter told the Reuters news agency on Monday.

About half the group’s 787s have been inspected and nearly all its 737s, the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity since the source was not authorised to speak to the media. Inspections were set to be completed in the next day or two.

Precautionary checks

The Air India crash preliminary report said the airline had not carried out the FAA’s suggested inspections, as the FAA’s 2018 advisory was not a mandate.

But it also said maintenance records showed that the throttle control module, which includes the fuel switches, was replaced in 2019 and 2023 on the plane involved in the crash.

In an internal memo on Monday, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said the preliminary report found no mechanical or maintenance faults and that all required maintenance had been carried out.

Some airlines around the world have been checking relevant switches since the 2018 advisory, including Australia’s Qantas Airways and Japan’s ANA.

Others said they had been making additional or new checks since the release of the preliminary report into the Air India crash.

Singapore Airlines said on Tuesday that precautionary checks on the fuel switches of its 787 fleet, including planes used by its low-cost subsidiary Scoot, confirmed all were functioning properly.

Flag carrier Korean Air Lines also said on Tuesday it had proactively begun inspecting fuel control switches and would implement any additional requirements the Ministry of Transport may have.

The Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner was headed to London from Ahmedabad in western India when it crashed, killing all but one of the people on board as well as 19 people on the ground.

When Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill last year that could have led to reparations for Mexican American families forced from their homes in Chavez Ravine in the 1950s, few knew the Dodgers had weighed in.

Newsom’s explanation was brief. He supported making amends for the injustice that occurred when Los Angeles officials uprooted three communities, seizing land for a housing project that would ultimately fall through before selling it to the Dodgers to enable the team’s move from Brooklyn. But the governor didn’t like that the bill would create a state-level task force rather than a local commission.

“A task force to study the events that occurred should be established at the local level,” Newsom wrote.

But previously unreported records show that the Dodgers lobbied state officials on the bill — as did the baseball team’s previous owner, Frank McCourt, who still shares ownership of the Dodger Stadium parking lots. McCourt’s lobbyists at the time included a firm led by Newsom’s friend Jason Kinney, whose French Laundry birthday dinner Newsom infamously attended at the height of the pandemic.

The records show that the Dodgers and McCourt lobbied on Assembly Bill 1950 — but not what side they took, if any. Did they oppose the legislation? And if so, did that lead to Newsom’s veto? It’s hard to know, because neither the Dodgers nor McCourt responded to my requests for comment.

As for Newsom, a spokesperson told me the governor’s office wasn’t lobbied on the bill — despite McCourt’s real estate company reporting otherwise.

Whatever actually happened, the Dodgers’ involvement raises questions about what went on behind the scenes. The public deserves answers — especially now that President Trump’s immigration raids have placed the team in the political spotlight, forcing its owners to grapple with the political and cultural power they wield.

For nearly two weeks after federal agents began rounding up brown-skinned people across the region, the team refused to comment, despite its more-than-40%-Latino fan base. For many fans, the silence felt like a betrayal — particularly after the team’s recent visit with Trump. A Dodgers employee even told Latina musician Nezza not to sign the National Anthem in Spanish before a game. (She did it anyway.)

Only when immigration agents gathered outside the Dodger Stadium parking lots last month did the team finally show some backbone, denying the agents entry and pledging $1 million to assist local immigrant families.

I’ll get back to the ICE raids and reparations bill shortly. But first, let’s note that this is hardly the first time that the Dodgers have hesitated to stand for social justice — despite being the franchise of Jackie Robinson.

Since last summer, 28,000 people have signed a petition urging the team to end its relationship with oil company Phillips 66, which advertises its 76 brand gasoline throughout Dodger Stadium. State officials have accused the oil giant of participating in a “decades-long campaign” to cover up the climate crisis — a crisis that affects everybody but is especially harmful to low-income families and people of color, including L.A.’s Latino communities.

A 76 gasoline ad above the right-field scoreboard at Dodger Stadium, seen during a July 4 game against the Astros.

(Kevork Djansezian / Los Angeles Times)

In March, California Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) called on the Dodgers to drop Phillips 66 as a sponsor. In a letter to controlling owner Mark Walter, she pointed out that Angelenos breathe some of the nation’s most polluted air. She also alluded to the link between fossil fuels and more devastating wildfires.

“For decades, the Dodgers have been ahead of the curve. On issues from banning cigarette ads to making history by signing Jackie Robinson, this team has occupied a unique place in American sports,” Gonzalez wrote.

How have the Dodgers responded? At least publicly, they haven’t. Every time I’ve written about Phillips 66, they’ve declined to respond. I suspect they’re hoping the whole issue will just go away.

News flash: It’s not going away. Especially after the ICE raids.

To understand the connection between immigration and environmental justice, I’d recommend listening to Alicia Rivera. She’s an organizer with Communities for a Better Environment, and she’s spoken at rallies outside Dodger Stadium protesting Phillips 66. Even before Trump launched his harsh anti-immigrant crackdown last month, she was explaining how deportations and dirty air are part of the same system of injustices.

As drivers entered the Dodger Stadium parking lots before a game in May, she talked about her young grandson, and her fears over what kind of world he would inherit: How much worse would wildfires get? Would fossil-fueled weather disasters in other countries prompt even more refugees to flee to the U.S.?

“Workers are being detained, arrested in the middle of the street, people who don’t even identify themselves are deporting them. And these oil companies have been complicit in denying us to know the truth, paying millions to pay so-called scientists to deny that their products have caused climate change,” Rivera said.

When I asked Rivera if dumping 76 would be a worthy response to the ICE raids — a way for the Dodgers to show that they care about Latino fans — she had a simple answer: “Of course. That would be a major breakthrough.”

“I see a consistent pattern of disregard for the well-being of the people they are profiting from,” she said.

Community organizer Alicia Rivera speaks at a rally outside Dodger Stadium on Sept. 22.

(Marcus Ubungen / Los Angeles Times)

That pattern arguably goes back decades.

The Chavez Ravine bill wouldn’t have forced the Dodgers to pay a cent to displaced families or their descendants; all it would have done is create a task force to study reparations. But the team has long shied away from so much as discussing the land’s grim backstory.

Only five entities paid lobbyists to weigh in on AB 1950, per an open-source database that compiles state records. Two of them — Fieldstead and Co. and Inclusive Action for the City — went on record supporting the legislation. I confirmed that a third group, the Western Center on Law & Poverty, was also in support.

Only the Dodgers and McCourt’s real estate company, McCourt Partners, haven’t publicly taken a stance.

The Dodgers lobbied the Legislature on AB 1950, while McCourt lobbied both the Legislature and the governor’s office, the records show.

Again, it’s tough to know what happened behind the scenes. Lawmakers passed the bill overwhelmingly, but only after a Senate committee nixed plans for a local task force — exactly what Newsom claimed he wanted.

As far as Wendy Carrillo is concerned, though, the lobbying records speak for themselves.

Carrillo was the state Assembly member, no longer in office, who wrote AB 1950. When I told her what I’d learned, she was outraged. She felt the records confirmed her suspicion that the Dodgers helped kill the bill.

She accused the team of “being disconnected from the very fan base that they have.”

“That same criticism can be made toward their visit to Trump at the White House, and their lack of understanding this moment in Los Angeles amid the growing ICE raids,” Carrillo said.

Dodgers owner Mark Walter looks on as President Trump speaks at the White House in April. The team visited Washington, D.C., to celebrate its 2024 World Series championship.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

Indeed, many fans are far from satisfied with the team’s response to Trump’s cruelty. Which is no surprise, given that the Dodgers still seem eager to avoid angering Trump. Team president Stan Kasten was maddeningly vague in his statement touting the $1 million for immigrants, describing the raids as “what’s happening in Los Angeles” and acknowledging only that said happenings have “reverberated among thousands upon thousands of people.”

In contrast, L.A. women’s soccer team Angel City spoke up immediately about the “fear and uncertainty” created by the raids. Its players wore “Immigrant City Football Club” shirts that declared, “Los Angeles is for everyone.”

To Carrillo, the Dodgers’ latest failure to show true solidarity with its Latino fan base is another manifestation of the team’s original sin — its decades-long refusal to acknowledge the Mexican American communities of Bishop, La Loma and Palo Verde, which were bulldozed to make way for Dodger Stadium.

Carrillo, who’s running for state Senate in a district that would include Dodger Stadium, wants Walter and his co-owners — who include basketball legend Magic Johnson and tennis star Billie Jean King — to support a memorial for displaced Chavez Ravine families. And to offer more vocal support for persecuted immigrants today.

The team said its $1 million in donations would be followed by “additional announcements.” So far, crickets.

Owning up to Chavez Ravine’s sordid history would be a great step. So would getting rid of the 76 ads.

Both actions would infuriate the MAGA crowd — but so would just about anything the Dodgers might do in response to the ICE raids. In fact, the backlash has already started. A group co-founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, has filed a civil rights complaint against the Dodgers.

Whatever they do next, the Dodgers will make some enemies. Just like they did when they signed Jackie Robinson and broke baseball’s color barrier. The only question is whether they’ll once again stand for justice.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Masked federal agents are snatching up immigrants. It’s been less than two weeks since the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities. President Trump’s long-threatened tariffs could finally kick in next week.

Given all that, most people probably aren’t focused on climate change.

But they should be. Because Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed the Senate this week and was poised to clear the House early Thursday, would do more than gut Medicaid, cut student loan relief and increase funding for deportations. It would kill federal support for solar and wind power, undoing President Biden’s historic climate law and punishing Americans with deadlier air, more lethal heat waves and higher electric bills.

I’m usually a climate optimist. But it’s hard to find reasons for hope right now.

The Senate bill would eliminate tax credits for solar and wind farms that don’t come online by the end of 2027 — a brutal deadline for projects that take years to permit, finance and construct. That would slam the brakes on new development and also jeopardize hundreds of projects already in the works — not only solar and wind farms, but also factories to build solar panels, wind turbines, lithium-ion batteries and other clean energy technologies.

Solar and wind farms that start construction by June 2026 would get tax credits no matter when they come online, a last-minute concession to the handful of Republican senators with a modicum of sense.

As if needing to counterbalance that concession, Republican leaders added lucrative tax credits for metallurgical coal, an incredibly dirty fossil fuel that’s mostly shipped to China and other countries to make steel.

The bill would also end tax credits for rooftop solar, electric vehicles and energy-efficient home upgrades — while reducing royalty rates for coal mined on public lands, and requiring more oil and gas leasing on those lands.

“The fossil fuel industry helped pay for this government, and now they’re getting their reward,” Bill McKibben, the preeminent climate author and activist, wrote in his newsletter.

That’s part of the explanation. Another part, I think, is that most voters aren’t paying close attention.

Polls consistently show that an overwhelming majority of Americans want cleaner energy, and climate action writ large. But polls also show that climate ranks low as a priority for most Americans.

Wind turbines in the California desert, seen from Highway 58.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

So when it comes time for Trump and his allies to pay for their deficit-ballooning tax cuts — which mostly benefit the rich — clean energy is an easy target. They can tell outrageous lies about solar and wind being unreliable and expensive, and many people will either believe them or not care enough to seek out the truth.

Indeed, Trump wrote on social media last month that renewable energy tax credits are a “giant SCAM.” He claimed that wind turbines “and the rest of this ‘JUNK’” are “10 times more costly than any other energy.”

That’s not even remotely true. Authoritative sources, including the investment bank Lazard, report that solar and wind are America’s cheapest sources of new electricity, even without tax credits. Those low costs help explain why solar, wind and batteries made up 94% of new power capacity in the U.S. last year. Even in Texas, they’re booming.

For now, at least. John Ketchum, president of Florida-based NextEra Energy, warned the Trump administration in March that shelving renewables and battery storage would “force electricity prices to the moon.”

Lo and behold, research firm Energy Innovation estimates the Senate bill would cause average household energy costs to increase $130 annually by 2030. The firm also predicts 760,000 lost jobs by 2030.

“Families will face higher electric bills, factories will shut down, Americans will lose their jobs, and our electric grid will grow weaker,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Assn.

The point about the grid growing weaker is key. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, one of three Republicans to vote against the bill, mentioned a global turbine shortage that’s slowing the construction of gas-fired power plants. He stated plainly what energy executives know: that renewables and batteries are needed for a reliable grid.

“What you have done is create a blip in power service,” Tillis told his colleagues.

Here’s a question: If clean energy is so cheap, and in such high demand, why does it need subsidies?

For one thing, solar and wind projects require big upfront investments, after which the fuel, be it sun or wind, is free. Gas plants are often less expensive to build, but they can subject consumers to huge utility bill swings when fuel costs soar — during geopolitical turmoil, for instance, or during climate-fueled weather disasters.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s Eland solar and storage plant, located in Kern County, generates electricity for a record-low price.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Also relevant: Fossil fuel subsidies are so deeply entrenched in the U.S. tax code that they rarely make news. Coal, oil and gas benefit from tens of billions of dollars in subsidies every year, by some estimates.

And that’s without accounting for the bigger wildfires, harsher droughts, stronger storms, hotter heat waves and other harms of fossil fuel combustion, including air pollution that kills millions of people worldwide each year. Oil, gas and coal companies don’t pay those costs. Taxpayers do.

So, yes, solar and wind still need a leg up. But even under Biden’s climate law, the U.S. hasn’t been reducing heat-trapping emissions enough to help keep global warming to less-than-catastrophic levels.

And now, under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the U.S. will be moving backward instead of forward.

So if you care about the climate crisis, what can you do?

I wish I could say California was doubling down on climate leadership, like it did during Trump’s first term. Sadly, Gov. Gavin Newsom hasn’t prioritized clean energy as he readies a possible presidential run. Again and again, he and his appointees have yielded to the fossil fuel industry and its allies — on plastics recycling, oil refinery profits, emissions disclosures and more.

Other Golden State leaders are doing no better. This week, lawmakers passed an awful law pushed by Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) that will pause new energy efficiency rules for homes until 2031. Meanwhile, a potentially transformative “climate superfund” bill — which would charge fossil fuel companies for their pollution and use the money to help Californians cope with climate disasters — is languishing in Sacramento.

The landscape is bleak. But we’re not doomed.

The planet will almost certainly warm beyond an internationally agreed upon target of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. But 2 degrees is a lot better than 2.5 degrees, and way better than 3 degrees. Climate change isn’t a game we win or lose. Every bit of avoided warming means safer, healthier lives for more people.

Yes, the U.S. is a climate train wreck right now. But global warming is just like immigration or healthcare: Nothing will change if most of us do nothing. So don’t tune out. Don’t surrender to despair. Bring up climate when you talk to your friends and call your representatives. Make protest signs about it. Let it guide your vote.

As McKibben wrote: “Our job from here on out … is to make ourselves heard.”

“It may not work tomorrow. It may not work until we’ve gotten more decent people into office. But it’s our job, and not to be shirked,” he wrote. “And in some sad way it’s an honor: We’re the people who get to make the desperate stand for a country and a planet that works.”

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

The US agency harshly criticised Boeing’s safety culture as well as ineffective oversight by the FAA.

Boeing failed to provide adequate training, guidance and oversight to prevent a midair cabin panel blowout of a new 737 MAX 9 flight in January 2024, which spun the planemaker into a major crisis, the United States National Transportation Safety Board has said.

The board on Tuesday harshly criticised Boeing’s safety culture and its failure to install four key bolts in a new Alaska Airlines MAX 9 during production, as well as the ineffective oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy said at a board meeting that the incident was entirely avoidable because the planemaker should have addressed the unauthorised production that was identified in numerous Boeing internal audits, reports and other forums for at least 10 years.

“The safety deficiencies that led to this accident should have been evident to Boeing and to the FAA,” Homendy said. “It’s nothing short of a miracle that no one died or sustained serious physical injuries.”

Boeing’s on-the-job training was lacking, the NTSB said, adding that the planemaker is working on a design enhancement that will ensure the door plug cannot be closed until it is firmly secured.

The accident prompted the US Department of Justice to open a criminal investigation and declare that Boeing was not in compliance with a 2021 deferred prosecution agreement. CEO Dave Calhoun announced he would step down within a few months of the midair panel blowout.

Homendy praised new Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, but said, “He has his work cut out for him, a lot of challenges to address, and that’s going to take time.”

Boeing said it regretted the accident and was continuing to work on strengthening safety and quality across its operations.

The FAA said on Tuesday that it has “fundamentally changed how it oversees Boeing since the Alaska Airlines door-plug accident and we will continue this aggressive oversight to ensure Boeing fixes its systemic production-quality issues”.

Damaged reputation

The incident badly damaged Boeing’s reputation and led to a grounding of the MAX 9 for two weeks as well as a production cap of 38 planes per month by the FAA, which still remains in place.

“While Boeing is making progress, we will not lift the 737 monthly production cap until we are confident the company can maintain safety and quality while making more aircraft,” the FAA added.

Boeing created no paperwork for the removal of the 737 MAX 9 door plug – a piece of metal shaped like a door covering an unused emergency exit – or its re-installation during production, and still does not know which employees were involved, the NTSB said on Tuesday.

Then-FAA administrator Michael Whitaker said in June 2024 that the agency was “too hands off” in Boeing oversight and has boosted the number of inspectors at Boeing and the MAX fuselage manufacturer’s, Spirit AeroSystems, factories.

Boeing agreed last July to plead guilty to a criminal fraud conspiracy charge after two fatal 737 MAX crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia. But it last month struck a deal with the US Justice Department to avoid a guilty plea.

The Justice Department has asked a judge to approve the deal, which will allow Boeing to avoid pleading guilty or facing oversight by an outside monitor.

Earlier this month, Boeing’s problems resurfaced when an Air India flight crashed soon after takeoff from the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, killing all but one on board. The aircraft being flown was a nearly 12-year-old Dreamliner. Investigations behind that crash are currently under way.

Published on
20/06/2025 – 8:00 GMT+2

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The German Aerospace Industries Association (BDLI) wants only completed products aircraft and helicopters to be targeted by the EU for retaliatory tariffs – leaving the market for the supply of parts unscathed – if trade negotiations between the EU and the US founder, the group has told Euronews. It’s position aligns it with the French sector’s stance.

“If the EU must respond, counter-tariffs should focus strictly on fully finished aerospace end products – such as complete aircraft and helicopters – and explicitly exclude spare parts or critical products,” BDLI said in an email to Euronews. “This is essential to avoid unintended harm to European and global production networks.”

US aircraft are included in the European Commission’s draft listof €95 billion worth of US products that could face duties if ongoing negotiations fail. The list was open for industry consultation until 10 June and now awaits approval by EU member states.

Trade tensions between the EU and the US risk reignitingthe long-standing rivalry between aerospace giants Boeing and Airbus. However, the two economies’ production systems are tightly intertwined. For instance, the LEAP engine, used in both Airbus and Boeing jets, is co-produced by US-based General Electric and France’s Safran.

Boeing and GE Aerospace are scaling back their public activities following the fatal crash of an Air India jetliner, with the planemaker’s CEO cancelling his trip to the Paris Airshow next week and GE postponing an investor day.

More than 240 people were killed when an Air India Boeing 787 jet bound for London crashed moments after taking off from the city of Ahmedabad on Thursday, authorities said, in the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a message to staff on Thursday evening that he and Boeing Commercial Airplanes boss Stephanie Pope had cancelled plans to attend the Paris Airshow “so we can be with our team and focus on our customer and the investigation.”

The airshow, which runs from June 16 to June 20 at Le Bourget, is the global aviation industry’s largest trade show, where typically many aircraft orders are placed by airlines.

Ortberg had been due to attend for the first time as Boeing CEO since being appointed to lead the company out of a series of back-to-back safety, industrial and corporate crises.

Aircraft engine maker GE Aerospace, whose engines were in the Boeing 787 plane, had planned an investor day on June 17, coinciding with the show.

GE said the briefing had been cancelled and it would put a team together to go to India and analyse data from the crashed aeroplane.

“GE Aerospace’s senior leadership is focused on supporting our customers and the investigation,” the company said. It said it planned to give a financial update later this month.

Safety experts stressed it was too early to speculate why one of the world’s most modern airliners should crash shortly after takeoff. Accidents in that phase of flight are rare, said Paul Hayes, safety director at UK consultancy Cirium Ascend.

The Indian investigation of the crash is currently focusing on the engine, flaps and landing gear, Reuters reported on Friday, citing an unnamed source, as the country’s regulator ordered safety checks on Air India’s entire Boeing-787 fleet.

Under global aviation rules, India will lead the probe with support from NTSB investigators in the United States, who will, in turn, liaise with Boeing and GE on technical matters.

The reduced attendance plans came as delegates said the crash had cast a sombre mood over the airshow, putting in doubt several order announcements and putting safety back in the spotlight alongside concerns about US tariffs.

The world’s largest aviation trade expo, running from June 16 to 20 in Le Bourget, usually gives aircraft and arms manufacturers a key stage to showcase deals and sets the tone for a global supply chain already under pressure from shortages.

Boeing shares were down Friday, falling 3.8 percent, while GE Aerospace was down 2.4 percent.

Fewer deals

Boeing has cancelled some events and is unlikely to make any commercial order announcements at the show, though it will press ahead with low-key briefings on other topics, delegates said.

One key expected announcement had been a potential order for dozens of Boeing jets, including the 787 from Royal Air Maroc. But the airline plans no announcement at the show, and this will also affect Airbus, which had been expected to sell it some 20 A220s, industry sources said.

None of the companies had any comment on specific deals.

Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury on Friday expressed condolences over the accident, and the world’s largest planemaker was expected to observe a muted tone surrounding what had been expected to be a busy week for orders to meet high demand.

One delegate said business would continue but with fewer of the high-profile news conferences and in-person announcements associated with the industry’s biggest commercial showcase.

Another said some order announcements could be delayed until later in the year as a mark of respect for victims.

“The show will be a lot more sombre, less celebratory,” said a delegate involved in planning one such announcement, speaking anonymously because the plans have not been publicly revealed.

“The show will go ahead as planned, but it will be more subdued and with less cheerleading,” the delegate said.

A London-bound Air India plane carrying more than 240 people crashed shortly after takeoff Thursday. The plane in question was a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, which was the subject of recent whistleblowing claims

Tragedy struck when an Air India aircraft destined for London with over 240 souls on board met a catastrophic end shortly after takeoff on Thursday.

The incident involving the Air India flight 171, a Boeing 787-8 referred to as Dreamliner, occurred when it crashed into a residential zone barely five minutes following its departure.

In response to the news, a Boeing spokesperson said the company was aware of the crash reports and is “working to gather more information.”

This marked the inaugural fatal accident involving a Boeing 787, a modern widebody, twin-engine jet also recognised as the Dreamliner. However, this adds to the recent spate of misfortunes for Boeing, with the majority linked to the 737 Max, one of their different models.

READ MORE: All the possible Air India crash causes – from engine failure to pilot error

The crash has led many to question whether flying on a Dreamliner is safe, how they can find out if they’re booked onto one and if they’re able to choose a different aircraft if they are. Here’s everything you need to know:

Is flying on a Dreamliner safe?

Up until now, the Dreamliner 787-8 had recorded no fatalities, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The plane involved in the crash was built in 2013, with Air India flying nearly three dozen of the jets. The first Dreamliner was delivered in 2011.

It will take a long time to find out what the cause of this crash was, although crashes tend to be the result of multiple different factors such as bird strikes, pilot error, manufacturing defects and inadequate maintenance.

Dreamliner’s safety record has come under an unusual amount of scrutiny in recent years. Deliveries of the plane were paused for more than a year until the summer of 2022 so that manufacturer Boeing could address quality concerns on some of the aircraft, the New York Times reports.

This included filling paper-thin gaps in the plane’s body and replacing some titanium parts that were made with the wrong material.

In response to whistle-blower claims that parts of the body of the Dreamliner were not properly fastened together, Boeing publically claimed that there was no evidence of this following extensive testing. The manufactuer released testing data which showed that one 787 test airframe had shown no signs of fatigue after the equivalent of 165,000 flight cycles, the NYT reports.

Back in 2022, the longest-serving Dreamliner in actual service had flown only a tenth as far as the test plane.

What tests are carried out to ensure planes are safe to fly?

All planes, including Boeing, are required to undergo comprehensive safety checks involving pre-flight inspections, maintenance programs and regulatory oversight. Among the required checked are daily and pre-flight inspections by engineers and pilots, and scheduled maintenance checks. These involve regularly checking machines and replacing parts to maintain performance, increase efficiency and ensure reliability.

READ MORE: Air India crash: One of two black boxes has been recovered from plane wreckageREAD MORE: Air India crash: Inside video call survivor made to dad as plane burst into flames

Is flying getting more dangerous?

While it may feel like it thanks to a series of high profile incidents, the short answer is no. Travel via commercial aircraft remains one of the safest forms of travel.

A 2017 Harvard study placed the odds of dying in a plane crash at one in 11 million, compared to one in 5,000 for a car crash. An International Air Transport Association annual safety report published this year found that commercial air travel is getting safer, generally speaking.

The accident rate last year was better than the five-year average, but worse than the best year recorded in 2023.

How can I find out if I’m flying on a 787-8?

Almost all airlines list the type of aircraft they’ll be using during the booking process. If you’ve already booked, you can use third-party sites like SeatGuru and FlightRadar24 to look up the aircraft type after you’ve booked by tapping in your flight number.

Can I cancel my flight if I’m worried about the plane type?

If you call up your airline and explain that you don’t want to fly on a certain type of airline, they may help you switch flights. But that would be up to them to decide. They’d have no legal obligation to do so unless you bought a flexible fare or very good travel insurance that specifically allows you to change your flight.