Malindo Air Receives Boeing 737 MAX 8

Malindo Air Receives Boeing 737 MAX 8. Boeing on Tuesday marked the first delivery of the new 737 Max 8 to launch Malaysia's Malindo Air customer with an official delivery at the manufacturer's delivery center in Seattle. The first delivery to the Lion Air subsidiary comes on the same day that Boeing resumed the full range of 737 Max flight tests after approval by the United States Federal Aviation Administration.

Boeing had resumed limited flight activities with the 737 Max on May 12, about a week after landing the fleet due to a potential problem with some of its CFM Leap-1B engines.

Boeing suspended 737 Max test flights on May 5 after CFM notified it of a possible "quality exhaust" involving low pressure turbine discs on certain Leap-1Bs delivered to the aircraft. A CFM spokesman told AIN that the company discovered an "anomoly" in the process of forging the LPT disks in question.

He added that the problem involved only one of several suppliers of the part, which means that it would not interrupt the production of the engines. Although it did not identify the vendor of the problem disks, he said that they came from the first CFM disk supplier, partner Safran, in its LPT assemblies. He also noted that suspect discs do not appear on the Leap-1A for the Airbus A320neo or the Leap-1C for the Comac C919, which use a larger low-pressure turbine.

Although Boeing did not comment on how many engines the suspect discs forced GE to dismantle for inspection, Safran CEO Olivier Andries told reporters that it would take "a few weeks" to resolve the resulting logistics disruption. CFM said inspections will include about 30 engines.

Certified by the FAA in March, the 737 Max 8 recorded some 2,000 hours in the engines, including evidence of abuse and flights of more than nine hours. Boeing's inspections throughout the process had not found any problems. "In addition, the 180-minute Etops test completed in April required another 3,000 simulated flight cycles at the test stand before CFM performed a full inspection," Boeing added.

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