When a Boeing 777’s engine cover broke apart and rained parts on a Denver suburb on Feb. 20, the news rang familiar to Christopher Behnam. In February 2018, the 777 he was piloting as captain suffered a similar emergency with the same engine type.
His plane, United Airlines Flight 1175 to Honolulu, was over the ocean 120 miles from the runway carrying more than 370 passengers and crew when a violent blast rocked it.
The jet shook uncontrollably, rolled sharply, and the noise was deafening, said Capt. Behnam. An engine had suffered severe damage. Years of training kicked in, the pilots regained control and shut the engine down. Even so, the plane was hard to handle. A third pilot went into the cabin and looked out the window: The engine hadn’t just failed; its cover had ripped away.
“After the explosion, it felt like she was going to fall apart,” Capt. Behnam said. “I knew I could fly the airplane. The issue was, can I fly it long enough to land it?” The pilots brought the plane to a safe landing in Hawaii.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates U.S. aviation failures, concluded that a roughly 35-pound fan blade broke in the plane’s Pratt & Whitney PW4000 engine due to fatigue, spiraling forward and causing parts of the engine cover to drop into the sea.
’s authority to inspect and sign off on several newly produced 787 Dreamliners, part of heightened scrutiny of production problems that have halted deliveries of the popular wide-body jets.
The Federal Aviation Administration said its inspectors, rather than the plane maker’s, would perform routine pre-delivery safety checks of four Dreamliners that Boeing has been unable for months to hand over to its airline customers while it grapples with various quality lapses.
The agency has long empowered Boeing to perform the final safety signoffs on the FAA’s behalf, allowing it to issue what are known as airworthiness certificates needed to hand over new jets to airlines. The FAA said it has withheld the same authority on some of the planes in previous years to keep inspectors’ skills current.
Now, the FAA said its move to withhold final-approval authority was part of a broader set of actions directed at Boeing’s 787 production issues. A spokesman said the agency could decide to have its own inspectors sign off on more Dreamliners. “We can extend the retention to other 787 aircraft if we see the need,” he said.
A Boeing spokesman said Wednesday that the company has engaged the FAA throughout its efforts to resume Dreamliner deliveries and would follow the agency’s direction on final approvals as it has in the past. The spokesman said Boeing was “encouraged by the progress our team is making” on restarting the deliveries.
After halting deliveries in October, Boeing has built up an inventory of more than 80 newly produced, undelivered Dreamliners, according to aviation consulting firm Ascend by Cirium. Boeing has said it expects to resume deliveries by the end of March.
The wide-body jets have an excellent safety record and are used frequently on international routes. Boeing learned of the FAA’s move in January and has already factored the FAA signoffs into its expected delivery schedule, a person familiar with Boeing’s planning said.
Among specific aircraft slated for final approvals by agency inspectors are two Dreamliners ordered by
United Airlines Holdings Inc.
United expects to receive the planes in late March or early April, a person familiar with the Chicago-based carrier’s plans said this week.
The Boeing spokesman said the manufacturer would adjust its delivery plans if needed so it can take the time to conduct comprehensive 787 inspections “to ensure each meets our rigorous engineering specifications.”
The suspension of deliveries has cut off a significant source of cash paid by customers as the plane maker navigates the Covid-19 pandemic and weak demand in global air travel. Bernstein analyst
Doug Harned
has estimated the Dreamliner delivery slowdown could cost Boeing as much as $8 billion in cash flow through 2020 and 2021. He expects half of that to be recovered next year as airlines take delivery and pay the rest of the cost.
Boeing said in January that it would likely continue burning cash this year but has adequate liquidity after raising billions of dollars in debt last year. Investor optimism about the broader travel recovery helped lift its shares by 21% last week. The stock gained another 3.3% on Wednesday, valuing Boeing at $149 billion.
While limited in scope, the FAA move on the Dreamliner is similar to a step the agency took after two crashes of Boeing 737 MAX jets killed 346 people in 2018 and 2019.
The FAA stripped Boeing of its authority to perform the pre-delivery safety checks on MAX jets in late 2019. At the time, a faulty flight-control system and production-related missteps with that aircraft were under congressional and regulatory scrutiny. The FAA approved the 737 MAX to resume passenger flights last year.
The Dreamliner lapses are among several quality problems Boeing has faced in recent years in its commercial, defense and space programs.
Many of the 787 quality lapses involve tiny gaps where sections of the jet’s fuselage, or body of the plane, join together. Problems have emerged in other places, too, including the vertical fin and horizontal stabilizer at the tail, according to a March 12 FAA summary of the agency’s regulatory actions viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Boeing has previously disclosed problems with a factory process used to generate small shims—materials used to fill the small gaps where the aircraft sections are joined together. Such gaps could lead to eventual premature fatigue of certain portions of the aircraft, potentially requiring extensive repairs during routine, long-term maintenance.
In its summary, the agency said it would hold on to its Dreamliner approval authority “until it is confirmed all shimming issues are resolved and airplanes conform to the FAA-approved design.”
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels said they attacked a major Saudi Arabian oil port on the Persian Gulf with drones and missiles on Sunday. Saudi authorities said the strike caused no casualties or damage.
The Saudi Energy Ministry said an assault “coming from the sea” had targeted petroleum tanks at the Ras Tanura port. It condemned what it called “repeated acts of sabotage and hostility” targeting energy supplies to the world.
“All indications point to Iran,” said an adviser to the Saudi royal court who said he was briefed on the matter. He said it wasn’t clear whether the origin was Iran or Iraq but that it hadn’t come from the direction of Yemen.
Iranian officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. An Iraqi official said he was unaware of any connection between his country and the attack.
Oil prices rose after the market opened Sunday evening in New York following the attack. Brent crude, the global gauge of oil prices, added more than 2.5% and rose above $71 a barrel. Prices have surged to their highest level since May 2019, lifted by rising demand as the global economy reopens from shutdowns designed to stop the coronavirus and supply curtailments around the world.
In 2019, a drone and missile attack on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry temporarily shut down half the kingdom’s crude production. At the time, the Houthis claimed responsibility, but the U.S. said the attack was launched from Iraq or Iran, which denied the accusations.
Yahya Saree, spokesman for Houthi forces fighting the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen, said the group on Sunday used 10 drones and a ballistic missile in an attack on Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, as well as four drones and six missiles aimed at the southern Saudi regions of Asir and Jazan.
The Houthis have stepped up aerial attacks on Saudi Arabia following the inauguration in January of President Biden, who has pledged to end the six-year-old civil war in Yemen and recalibrate Washington’s relationship with Riyadh.
The Biden administration has said it wants to re-enter the 2015 nuclear deal and then negotiate a deeper, broader agreement with Tehran that also addresses Iran’s military posture and activities in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia is leading a military coalition that intervened in the conflict in Yemen, which now faces one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The coalition launched a new round of airstrikes on the capital Sanaa earlier Sunday, warning that targeting civilians in Saudi Arabia was “a red line.”
Hussein Nasser, a father of two living in Sanaa, said the coalition bombardment of a nearby military base shattered the windows in dozens of homes in his neighborhood, injuring several people. “Five airstrikes at the same time while people and their kids were having lunch,” he said.
Following the incident at Ras Tanura, the port was operating as normal, according to several shipping sources. “Loadings are continuing normally,” said a manager at a shipping agency there who declined to be named. He wasn’t aware of any distribution center being hit.
Ras Tanura is the site of Saudi Aramco’s oldest and largest oil refinery and the world’s biggest offshore oil loading facility. The 550,000 barrel-a-day refinery supplies over a quarter of the kingdom’s fuel supply.
Shrapnel from a ballistic missile, which the Houthis said they had fired at military targets in nearby Dammam, fell near Aramco’s residential area in neighboring Dhahran, the Saudi statement said.
An Aramco employee living in the area said he saw two projectiles intercepted overhead by Saudi air defenses, which rely heavily on U.S. Patriot antimissile systems. Nearby residents reported the windows of their homes had trembled or even shattered from the blasts.
Images shared on social media showed bright blasts of light in the sky above Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province and later a plume of white smoke.
—Benoit Faucon, Saleh al-Batati and Amrith Ramkumar contributed to this article.
Write to Summer Said at summer.said@wsj.com and Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com
Millions of Texans remained without power on Wednesday morning although temperatures climbed above freezing across half of the state, a possible sign the state’s power grid could make significant progress restoring service. Pockets of Texas entered their third straight day of widespread power outages amid an extended winter storm, as electric utilities and the power grid scrambled to restore service.
The grid operators and power companies pleaded for patience as they tried to restore normal service. “We know this is hard. We continue to work as quickly and safely as possible to restore power,” the Texas grid operator tweeted Wednesday morning. “We hope to reduce outages over the course of the day.”
The emergency situation began in the early morning hours of Monday when several power plants tripped offline in rapid succession. The deep freeze continued into Wednesday in the northern part of the state, making it difficult for officials to restore power across the state.
What is happening in Texas?
An unusual Arctic blast spread across Texas on Monday and Tuesday from the tip of the Panhandle all the way to the Rio Grande Valley. Residents of large swaths of the state experienced two straight days of single-digit temperatures.
The widespread cold weather led to record-breaking demand for electricity. On Sunday night into Monday morning, frigid conditions hobbled dozens of power plants. This led the state’s grid operator to declare its most serious state of emergency at about 1:30 a.m. Monday.
agreed Thursday to pay $7 billion in compensation to the state of Minas Gerais where the collapse of its dam two years ago killed 270 people, polluted rivers and obliterated the surrounding landscape.
The settlement, the biggest in Brazilian legal history, is a watershed moment for a country long hampered by impunity and where miners and big businesses have often exerted more power than the state, especially in rural areas.
Public prosecutors said the $7 billion agreement is meant to compensate the state for the socioeconomic and environmental damage caused by the disaster. But it doesn’t affect the many pending homicide and other criminal charges in the case against the world’s largest iron-ore miner and former executives, including Vale’s previous chief executive,
Fabio Schvartsman.
The attorney general of Minas Gerais state,
Jarbas Soares Júnior,
said he hoped the size of Thursday’s settlement would send a message to the rest of the world: “We will not accept the exploitation of our resources without a minimum level of commitment to social and environmental responsibility.”
Vale accepted the decision and said it would book an additional expense of about $3.7 billion in its 2020 results.
“Vale is committed to fully repair and compensate the damage caused by the tragedy in Brumadinho and to increasingly contribute to the improvement and development of the communities in which we operate,” CEO
Eduardo Bartolomeo
said. “We know that we have work to do and we remain firm in that purpose.”
Mourners visited a memorial for victims of the Brumadinho dam collapse in 2019. Suicides and attempted suicides in the region soared following the disaster, particularly among women.
Photo:
douglas magno/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Vale’s investors welcomed the settlement as a way to avoid a drawn-out court battle, as did public prosecutors who cited other lawsuits over environmental problems in the state that haven’t been resolved after nearly 20 years.
The miner’s shares, which have increased about 60% in value since the dam collapsed, initially rose after news of the settlement, signaling investors’ hopes that the company can finally move past the disaster.
“Vale was able to get a discount of about one-third based on what the state government was asking, so they were skillful in this negotiation,” said
Ilan Arbetman,
an equities analyst at the Brazilian brokerage Ativa Investimentos. The miner has already provisioned a big part of the agreed value and is benefiting from high iron-ore prices, he said.
When Vale’s dam burst near the town of Brumadinho in January 2019, it unleashed a tsunami of mining waste speeding down the valley at up to 50 miles an hour, wiping out the on-site canteen where many workers were at lunch and destroying nearby homes and a guesthouse.
Two years later, the bodies of 11 victims still haven’t been found.
The collapse, one of the deadliest anywhere in the world, came only three years after a dam at another iron-ore mine jointly owned by Vale ruptured 100 miles away in the town of Mariana, killing 19 people and polluting more than 400 miles of river. The company vowed at the time that such a disaster would never happen again.
The settlement funds will be spent on environmental projects and shoring up local water supplies as well as improving transport networks and health services. The agreement also includes Vale’s initial costs in the aftermath of the disaster, when the company paid for temporary housing, mental-health professionals and emergency monthly stipends for residents.
Suicides and attempted suicides in Brumadinho soared in the year following the collapse, particularly among women. Some lost their husbands, sons and fathers at the mine, one of the region’s biggest employers, and were forced to wait months for rescue workers to recover the remains of their loved ones from the hardened mud.
Following the Mariana collapse in 2015, Vale and its partner at that dam,
BHP Group Ltd.
, created the Renova Foundation to manage compensation, which said it had paid out about $2.1 billion as of December last year. Prosecutors have said they believe that the second dam collapse in 2019 might not have occurred if Vale and BHP had faced tougher consequences for the first one.
In January last year, Brazilian prosecutors charged former Vale CEO Mr. Schvartsman and 10 others from the mining company with homicide. They also filed homicide charges against five people at Germany’s TÜV SÜD, the auditing company that certified the mine-waste dam as safe months before it ruptured.
All 16 people, including several high-level executives and directors at Vale, were also charged with environmental crimes, as were both companies as entities. Those charges are still being disputed in Brazil’s court system.
Prosecutors said last year it was clear that the dam had presented a critical structural risk since at least 2017 and that Vale had been fully aware of its safety problems. The German inspector certified the dam as safe despite also knowing about its structural problems, eyeing a chance to win multiple contracts with Vale and expand its Brazilian operations, they said.
As part of a year-long investigation into the disaster, The Wall Street Journal first reported in February 2019 the conflict of interest between Vale and TÜV SÜD, which worked as both an internal consultant and an independent safety evaluator for the miner.
A spokeswoman for Vale said Thursday that the miner wasn’t aware of an imminent risk at the dam. TÜV SÜD said it reiterated its commitment to “see the facts of the dam’s collapse clarified,” adding that it was cooperating with authorities. Mr. Schvartsman and the individuals facing criminal charges have denied wrongdoing in the case.
In recent years, Brazil’s public prosecutors have battled big companies with little success. After an oil spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in 2011, prosecutors filed lawsuits against
Chevron Corp.
for more than $7 billion. Two years later, they settled with the U.S. oil giant for $55 million.
Write to Samantha Pearson at samantha.pearson@wsj.com and Jeffrey T. Lewis at jeffrey.lewis@wsj.com