Born in Northern Ireland. Taught math 13 years. Moved to Seattle in '92. Seattle Times aerospace reporter since 2003. Won 2020 Pulitzer for 737 MAX coverage.
Jan 14 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The serious consequences of the Alaska Airlines blowout.
For Boeing, the hope of a brighter 2024 that would speed its recovery from almost five years of constant bad news blew away with the door plug on Alaska Flight 1282. seattletimes.com/business/boein…
And an explanation of how the MAX 9 door plug is designed and installed that makes it likely four critical bolts were inexplicably missing.
Featuring a wonderful graphic by Fiona Martin @vizscience
Southwest CEO internal message to employees - how the Christmas meltdown happened:
"We started off with the Winter Storm Elliott that really put pressure on our Ground Operations. The extreme cold weather made us limit the amount of time our Ground Operations staff were exposed.
We started to see equipment freeze, jet bridges freeze, fuel congeal, and as a result, we had to modify our network, sometimes shutting down Crew bases operations for a while.
Dec 27, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Major system chaos at Southwest:
* Flights cancelled all over the country.
* Crewmembers and passengers stranded. Central operations doesn't know where all are
* SW crew on social media say scheduled flights to be cancelled for 2 days to reset the system nytimes.com/2022/12/26/us/…
Southwest COO, Andrew Watterson:
"As we continue to work to recover our operation, we have made the decision to continue operating a reduced schedule by flying roughly one third of our schedule for the next several days as we work to reposition out of place Crew Members."
