From the Wall Street Journal.  Wichita is a great, great city. Boeing announced earlier this week it will spend $1 billion upgrading their factory and facilities. The cost of living is amazingly low.  Come check us out!

We lost a living legend over the weekend. Wichita's Connie Palacios, who worked on the B-29 assembly line at Boeing's Wichita Plant (below) during World War II, passed away. over the weekend.  While I only got to shake her hand once, she was quite a lady -- who was never reticent to state an opinion or tell us about her experiences. She was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.   Wichita, America, and the U.S. Army Air Force were lucky to have her. May she rest in peace. 

One of the two Wichita-built 747's serving as Air Force One Yesterday, there were national news programs and news stories that pertained to Boeing's construction of two new 747-400's that will become Air Force 1 when the President is on board. I have some history and insight that might be helpful.  When the 747's now used as Air Force One (AF1) were delivered during the Bush Administration, they were regular 747-400's that came off the Seattle assembly line and were then flown to Wichita for their conversion and customization. Wichita was the home of Boeing Military Airplane Company. In addition, parts of all Boeing jetliners were built in Wichita, including most of the 737 and (in the future at that time) the forward section of the 787 Dreamliner.    Doing the conversion of the two planes that make up the current AF1 took four years of work in Wichita based on Wikipedia and my recollection.    Unfortunately, Boeing later made the disastrous decision to spin ...

Boeing Starliner capsule docked to the space station This is no surprise and the safer decision. 

Part II   Oh, this is part two of a tale of a fateful trip.... The Storm-Wrecked Minnow -- CBS TV In  Part 1 , we compared the Boeing capsule's crew to the passengers on the fictional S.S. Minnow who were supposed to have taken a "three hour tour" and ended up being "stranded" for years.  On June 6, NASA and Boeing sent a two person crew to the International Space Station for an eight day tour, an eight day tour. Now, according to  NBC News , the Boeing crew may be stranded until  February! Wall Street Journal Perhaps I shouldn't make fun of this serious (I'd hate to be one of the astronauts), and possibly dangerous, situation but NASA's constant "just a few days later" public relations messaging over the last two months reminds me of another piece of aviation history. Maybe, as government agencies never seem to learn, it would be smarter to tell the truth from the beginning rather than engage -- using our tax dollars -- in weeks of evasive...

Those of us of a certain age remember the comedy television show Gilligan's Island  where a ship went out for "a three hour tour," ended up getting into a storm, and were stranded on a "desert island." The theme from Gilligan's Island  keeps coming back to me after reading Eric Burger's outstanding story on the astronauts who were launched in the Boeing capsule to the international space station for what was supposed to be an eight day tour -- that has now lasted eight weeks -- and, counting.  More and more, it looks like SpaceX is going to have to rescue the Boeing astronauts. What a mess!

Since April, there have been three Southwest Airlines (SWA) flights that have had serous drops in altitude that, at least as far as the media I have seen, no one seems to be tying the three together.  The first was off the Island of Kauai on April 11.  The plane was headed to the Lihue Airport. The radar shows solid thunderstorms in the area. According to news reports, in addition to the thunderstorm-caused turbulence, the flying pilot pushed the control column down and the plane dropped 400 feet. The thunderstorms are so widespread, one can question whether the plane should ever have taken off from Honolulu. It is against FAA regulations to fly into a thunderstorm , in addition to the thunderstorms appearing on the National Weather Service's radar (below), it would have clearly showed up on the pilot's own radar.  The second was under clear skies outside of Oklahoma City.  Air traffic control had to contact the SWA crew and ask them to check their altitude.  On...

...is in this interview by journalist Chris Rufo . I find this excerpt shocking... Wow.  Back when it was Boeing-Wichita instead of Spirit Aerosystems, Boeing had a policy of no private airplanes. They were proud to fly on their aircraft and "didn't want to compete with their customers." How things have changed!