An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: For years, Uber has successfully deployed armies of lawyers and lobbyists around the world to fight attempts to reclassify drivers as company workers entitled to higher wages and benefits rather than lower-cost, self-employed freelancers. Now the ride-hailing giant is retreating from that hard-line stance in Britain, one of its most important markets, after a major legal defeat. On Tuesday, Uber said it would reclassify more than 70,000 drivers in Britain as workers who will receive a minimum wage, vacation pay and access to a pension plan. [It does not give the full protections of the classification known as full "employee," which includes paternity and maternity leave and severance pay if dismissed, among other benefits.] The decision, Uber said, is the first time the company has agreed to classify its drivers in this way, and it comes in response to a landmark British Supreme Court decision last month that said Uber drivers were entitled to more protections.

The decision represents a shift for Uber, though the move was made easier by British labor rules that offer a middle ground between freelancers and full employees that doesn't exist in other countries. That middle ground makes it unclear whether Uber will change its stance elsewhere. More labor battles are coming in the European Union, where policymakers are considering tougher labor regulations of gig-economy companies, as well as in the United States. In a statement, Uber said last month's court decision "provides a clearer path forward as to a model that gives drivers the rights of worker status -- while continuing to let them work flexibly, in the same way they have been since Uber's launch in the U.K. in 2012." Uber hasn't disclosed how much the reclassification would increase its operating costs, but the company maintains that it will become profitable this year.

General Motors said on Monday that due to the global semiconductor chip shortage the U.S. automaker is building certain 2021 light-duty full-size pickup trucks without a fuel management module, hurting those vehicles' fuel economy performance. From a report: The lack of the active fuel management/dynamic fuel management module means affected models, equipped with the 5.3-liter EcoTec3 V8 engine with both six-speed and eight-speed automatic transmission, will have lower fuel economy by one mile per gallon, spokeswoman Michelle Malcho said. Malcho emphasized all trucks are still being built, something GM has repeatedly stressed it would try to protect as pickups are among GM's most profitable models. She declined to say the volume of vehicles affected. "By taking this measure, we are better able to meet the strong customer and dealer demand for our full-size trucks as the industry continues to rebound and strengthen," Malcho wrote in an email. The change runs through the 2021 model year, which typically ends in late summer or early fall, she said.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Live Science: A U.S. Air Force base in Texas has taken the first steps to guard against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. But what, exactly, is an EMP, and how big is the threat...? An EMP is a massive burst of electromagnetic energy that can occur naturally or be generated deliberately using nuclear weapons. While many experts don't think EMPs pose a big threat, some people argue that these types of weapons could be used to cause widespread disruption to electricity-dependent societies.

"You can use a single weapon to collapse the entire North American power grid," said defense analyst Peter Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Commission, which was set up to assess the threat of EMP attacks but shut down in 2017. "Once the electric grid goes down, everything would collapse," Pry told Live Science. "Everything depends on electricity: telecommunications, transportation, even water.... We've arrived at a place where a single individual can topple the technological pillars of civilization for a major metropolitan area all by himself armed with some device like this," he said...

The threat posed by EMPs is far from settled, though. A 2019 report by the Electric Power Research Institute, which is funded by utility companies, found that such an attack would probably cause regional blackouts but not a nationwide grid failure and that recovery times would be similar to those of other large-scale outages... "There are other ways that adversaries can achieve some of the same outcomes, some of which would be cheaper and some of which would be less discernible," Frank Cilluffo, director of Auburn University's McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, told Live Science. Such alternatives might include cyberattacks to take out critical infrastructure, including the electric grid, or even efforts to disrupt space-based communications or the GPS system that modern society is so reliant on.

Work to protect against EMPs makes sense... but these upgrades shouldn't distract from efforts to shore up defenses against more probable lines of attack, Cilluffo said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Back in the mid-'90s, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration evaluated [adaptive cruise control (ACC)], logging 35,000 test miles (56,000 km). [ACC uses forward-looking radar to control the distance to a vehicle in front of it.] The NHTSA found that "ACC is remarkably attractive to most drivers. The research indicates that, because ACC is so pleasing, people tend to utilize it over a broad range of conditions and to adopt tactics that prolong the time span of each continuous engagement." However, the agency's results also suggested "that ACC usage has induced some elevation in the speeds that would otherwise prevail in conventional (i.e., manual and [conventional cruise control]) driving."

To test how ACC affected speeding, the IIHS recruited 40 drivers in the Boston area, then gave half of them a 2017 Volvo S90 to use for about four weeks and the other half a 2016 Range Rover Evoque, both of which were equipped with ACC. The vehicles were equipped with a monitoring system that included a video camera facing the main instrument display (to determine when ACC was operating), as well as vehicle speed and location, and the speed limits. IIHS also only recorded data on controlled-access highways. Analyzing the data showed that drivers in both the Volvo and Range Rover were significantly more likely (95 percent) to exceed the posted speed limit when using ACC than not (77 percent), although there were no significant differences between the two groups.

However, the absolute differences in speed were not that great. When driving manually, drivers averaged 6.1 mph (9.8 km/h) over the speed limit. When using ACC, this increased to 7 mph (11.2 km/h), or 7.1 mph (11.4 km/h) when using Pilot Assist in the Volvo. Interestingly, drivers sped more on highways with 55 mph and 60 mph speed limits than on 65 mph-limited roads. The IIHS estimates that "[c]ompared with manual driving, the increase in speed associated with ACC/Pilot Assist use was estimated to increase crash risk by 10 percent for fatal crashes, by 4 percent for injury crashes, and by 3 percent for property-damage-only crashes." The IIHS does note that it did not take into account the following distances while using ACC, which drivers can control (in increments of 1 and 5 mph). It also noted that drivers generally drive 5-10 mph (8-16 km/h) faster than the posted limit, and that's easier to accomplish when using ACC than when driving manually.

nickwinlund77 shares a report from Bloomberg: There's nothing unusual looking about the 38-foot-long cargo plane that's been flying around Northern California for the past month. But the insides of the Cessna 208 have undergone a sci-fi makeover, resulting in a plane that's been taxiing, taking off, maneuvering in the air, and landing without a pilot. The machinery and software that let it fly on its own come from a startup called Reliable Robotics Corp., which has spent four years working on autonomous flight. The company has a grand total of two planes, but its long-term plan is to fill the sky with pilotless aircraft transporting cargo and passengers.

Reliable's story begins with the self-doubt of its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Robert Rose. His attempt to become a pilot in college ended for lack of money, but by 2016 he'd earned enough to give the cockpit another shot. Rose, who'd spent his career building autonomous cars and spacecraft for Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, expected that planes would have modernized since he last hopped in a cockpit. But the one he took up had decades-old technology. The shock of how much the flight still relied on a human pilot hit Rose midair as he contemplated his rusty skills and mortality. "My first thought was, 'Wow, it's insane that a private person is allowed to do this,'" he says. "You have all this navigation that you need to manage and all the communications you have to do between other planes and taking instructions from air traffic control. There's layers and layers of stuff. All the while, you are one mistake away from a fatal accident. I kept thinking, 'How is this OK?'"

Rose founded Reliable in 2017 with Juerg Frefel, an old buddy from SpaceX. The pair set up shop in Rose's garage in Los Altos, Calif., planning to make improved autopilot technology. They hoped to tap into the mechanical and positioning systems available on most planes, buy a couple of off-the-shelf sensors, and tie everything together with clever software that could make the types of decisions usually expected of pilots. Each step of the way, however, they discovered the existing gear for sale wasn't resilient enough for the job. "You just could not have a serious conversation about removing the human from the plane with these parts," Rose says. "That meant we had to build."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is calling on its sister agency to implement stricter regulation related to automated vehicle technology. In a letter it sent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) at the start of February, the NTSB says the regulator "must act" to "develop a strong safety foundation." What's notable about the document is that NTSB chair Robert Sumwalt frequently cites Tesla in a negative light to support his department's suggestions. The automaker is referenced 16 times across the letter's 15 pages.

For instance, in one section, Sumwalt writes of NHTSA's "continued failure" to implement regulations that would prevent driver-assist systems like Autopilot from operating beyond their intended use. "Because NHTSA has put in place no requirements, manufacturers can operate and test vehicles virtually anywhere, even if the location exceeds the AV control system's limitations," Sumwalt writes. "For example, Tesla recently released a beta version of its Level 2 Autopilot system, described as having full self-driving capability. By releasing the system, Tesla is testing on public roads a highly automated AV technology but with limited oversight or reporting requirements."

Uber and Lyft will work together to share information on US drivers and delivery people accused of physical and sexual assault to ensure those individuals are banned on both platforms, the two companies announced on Thursday in separate blog posts. Engadget reports: HireRight, a company that specializes in conducting background checks, will oversee the Industry Sharing Safety Program database. Other transportation and delivery companies in the US will have the chance to contribute and access the database as long as they adhere to the same data accuracy and privacy policies that Uber and Lyft must follow.

"We want to share this information with each other and hopefully in the near future with other companies, so that our peers in this space can be informed and make decisions for their own platforms to keep those platforms safe," Jennifer Brandenburger, Lyft's head of policy development, told NBC News. The database won't include information on victims. Additionally, the incident that landed a driver in the database will fall in broad categories.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Car and Driver: Canoo, an electric automotive startup based in California, has expanded its lineup of forthcoming electric vehicles by revealing this snub-nosed pickup. The pickup, which sports a design similar to Canoo's passenger van, will offer more than 200 miles of range and as much as 600 horsepower and 550 pound-feet of torque with the dual-motor configuration; a rear motor configuration will also be offered. That power and range, and a full six-to-eight-foot pickup bed, all have to fit into a vehicle with a 112.2-inch wheelbase -- an inch shorter than the Tesla Model 3 -- and an overall length, at 184 inches, that makes it more than two feet shorter than the Ford Ranger pickup.

The pickup rides on Canoo's multi-purpose platform architecture and will be the third Canoo vehicle to do so. [...] The new pickup emphasizes modularity and looks to maximize its utility. It has tables folding down around the vehicle, various hidden storage areas, and numerous charging points on the exterior of the truck. In a video exploring the ins and outs, Tony Aquila, executive chairman of Canoo, said that the goal was to make something that was very functional and could also be personalized. On either side of the six-foot bed, tables fold down to function as a workspace, and there is also a table that folds down from the front of the truck. That table exposes a small storage area as well as various points to charge or power electronics. The pickup bed can also be extended, as well as enclosed, to eight feet long to fit bigger items. Steps with storage within them can be pulled out of the sides of the truck to make it easier to access anything on the roof rack. And to answer the question any truck owner would ask, yes, there's a taillamp setup in the bed extension, so it's okay to drive the truck with the bed extended to fit longer cargo.

The interior of the pickup, shown in the video, shows it fits two people, but Aquila said it could be adapted for a three-person setup. Information such as speed and battery levels appear to be on a broad screen just below the windshield. Canoo's pickup will be available for pre-order beginning in the second quarter of this year, but production isn't slated to begin until 2023.

In 2020, the average US driver spent 26 hours stuck in traffic. While that's still more than a day, it's a steep decline from pre-pandemic times; in 2019 the average American sacrificed 99 hours to traffic jams. Around the world, it's a similar story. From a report: German drivers averaged an identical 26 hours of traffic in 2020, down from 46 the year before. In the UK, 2019 sounded positively awful, with 115 hours in traffic jams. At least one thing improved for that island nation in 2020: its drivers only spent 37 hours stationary in their cars. This data was all collected by traffic analytics company Inrix for its 2020 Global Traffic Scorecard that tracks mobility across more than 1,000 different cities around the world based on travel times, miles traveled, trip characteristics, and the effect of crashes on congestion in each city.

And unless you've spent the past 12 months in a cave -- in which case, gee, do I have some crappy news for you -- you'll instinctively know that there were big declines in traffic in 2020, and in particular a drop in people traveling to downtowns and central business districts. Still, traffic didn't actually disappear completely, and averages hide a lot in a country as large as the United States. The worst traffic of 2020 was experienced in New York City, up from 4th worst in 2019, where drivers lost 100 hours to traffic jams. But New Yorkers still spent 28 percent less time stuck in traffic, traveled 28 percent fewer miles, and experienced 38 percent fewer crashes than in 2019. The biggest decline in traffic was seen in Washington, DC. In the nation's capital, drivers spent 29 hours in traffic, a whopping 77 percent decrease over pre-pandemic times. However, the city only saw a 26 percent reduction in crashes and a 25 percent decrease in vehicle miles traveled.

China has revealed a prototype for a new high-speed Maglev train that is capable of reaching speeds of 385 miles (620 kilometers) per hour. CNN reports: The train runs on high-temperature superconducting (HTS) power that makes it look as if the train is floating along the magnetized tracks. The sleek 21-meter-long (69 feet) prototype was unveiled to media in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, on January 13. In addition, university researchers constructed 165 meters (541 feet) of track to demonstrate how the train would look and feel in transit, according to state-run Xinhua News.

Professor He Chuan (vice president of Southwest Jiaotong University, which worked on the prototype) told reporters that the train could be "operational" within 3-10 years. He added: "Sichuan has rich rare earth resources, which is very beneficial to our construction of permanent magnet tracks, thus promoting the faster development of experiments."

In a bid to prove that its robot drivers are safer than humans, Waymo simulated dozens of real-world fatal crashes that took place in Arizona over nearly a decade. From a report: The Google spinoff discovered that replacing either vehicle in a two-car crash with its robot-guided minivans would nearly eliminate all deaths, according to data it publicized today. The results are meant to bolster Waymo's case that autonomous vehicles operate more safely than human-driven ones. With millions of people dying in auto crashes globally every year, AV operators are increasingly leaning on this safety case to spur regulators to pass legislation allowing more fully autonomous vehicles on the road.

But that case has been difficult to prove out, thanks to the very limited number of autonomous vehicles operating on public roads today. To provide more statistical support for its argument, Waymo has turned to counterfactuals, or "what if?" scenarios, meant to showcase how its robot vehicles would react in real-world situations. Last year, the company published 6.1 million miles of driving data in 2019 and 2020, including 18 crashes and 29 near-miss collisions. In those incidents where its safety operators took control of the vehicle to avoid a crash, Waymo's engineers simulated what would have happened had the driver not disengaged the vehicle's self-driving system to generate a counterfactual. The company has also made some of its data available to academic researchers.

The Seattle Times reports: Haunted by the two deadly crashes of Boeing 737 MAX jets and his agency's role in approving the plane, veteran Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety engineer Joe Jacobsen is stepping forward publicly to give the victims' families "a firsthand account of what the truth is." In a detailed letter sent last month to a family that lost their daughter in the second MAX crash in Ethiopia two years ago this week, and in interviews with The Seattle Times, Jacobsen gave the first personal account by an insider of the federal safety agency's response to the MAX crashes...

He believes additional system upgrades are needed beyond Boeing's fix for the MAX that was blessed by the FAA and other regulators.

And Jacobsen argues that the plane would be safer if Boeing simply removed altogether the new software — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) — that went wrong in the two crashes that killed 346 people. Jacobsen also calls for the replacement of some of the people at "the highest levels of FAA management," whom he blames for creating a culture too concerned with fulfilling the demands of industry. In his letter and interview, Jacobsen also described in more depth than previously reported how an autothrottle system issue may have contributed to the crash in Ethiopia in March 2019.

Boeing and the FAA said in separate statements they believe the MAX is fixed and safe, and that regulators worldwide have validated this conclusion...

A week after the Lion Air crash on Oct. 29, 2018, Jacobsen received an email from a colleague asking if there was an issue paper on MCAS. "This was the first day that I heard about MCAS," he wrote. "We had no issue papers, and if we had, I would have been the engineer responsible for providing technical content and comment on such an issue paper." When he did get a look at the system, Jacobsen said he was "shocked to discover that the airplane was purposely designed and certified to use just one AOA (Angle of Attack) input for a flight critical function."

If given the chance during the original certification, he's certain that he and "6 to 8 of our most experienced engineers in the Seattle office" would have identified that as a serious design flaw because there's "a long history of AOA sensor failures."

Instead, Boeing minimized MCAS and kept the details of its assessment to itself...
The article also argues that Boeing itself didn't grasp the danger of its system. "Michael Teal, 737 MAX chief engineer, testified to Congress that he first learned only after the Lion Air crash that MCAS relied on a single sensor.

States like Pennsylvania, Virginia, Idaho, Florida and Wisconsin have granted sidewalk robots legal rights as "pedestrians." Axios reports: In Pennsylvania, robot "pedestrians" can weigh up to 550 pounds and drive up to 12 mph. "Opposition has largely come from pedestrian and accessibility advocates, as well as labor unions like the Teamsters," per the Pittsburgh City Paper. The laws are a boon to Amazon's Scout delivery robot and FedEx's Roxo, which are being tested in urban and suburban settings. "Backers say the laws will usher in a future where household items show up in a matter of hours, with fewer idling delivery vans blocking traffic and spewing emissions," per Wired.

Some technology evangelists think these laws are a spectacularly bad idea. The National Association of City Transportation Officials -- NACTO -- says the robots "should be severely restricted if not banned outright." "Uncoordinated autonomous delivery services could flood sidewalks with bots, making walking increasingly difficult and unpleasant," NACTO says in a report. "Drone delivery could significantly increase noise pollution and add a new dimension of chaos to urban streets."

Honda Motor will on Friday launch a new car equipped with the world's first certified level 3 autonomous driving technology. Nikkei Asia reports: Industry experts are cautiously watching to see if the Legend, a luxury sedan that operates without driver supervision under certain conditions but requires the driver to assume control of the vehicle within seconds when alerted, can capture enough demand to suggest a way forward for other manufacturers. Honda unveiled the Legend on Thursday at an online press event.

The new model's Traffic Jam Pilot system was approved by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in November. It can free drivers from driving in congested traffic on an expressway when traveling slower than 50 kilometers per hour. The system automatically accelerates, brakes and steers while monitoring the vehicle's surroundings, using data from high-definition mapping and external sensors. The driver, meanwhile, can enjoy the vehicle's infotainment using the navigation screen but must respond to the system's request for a handover when the vehicle speeds up after the traffic jam eases. The report says Honda is proceeding cautiously, only producing 100 units that will be available only for lease sales. The vehicle will also carry a steep price of $102,000.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: US President Joe Biden has made the shift to electric vehicles an early focus of his administration. Days after his inauguration, he vowed to replace hundreds of thousands of federal civilian vehicles with electric versions. On Tuesday, Biden held a virtual meeting with CEOs from companies building charging infrastructure. The administration has set a goal to build more than 500,000 new electric vehicle charging stations by 2030.

Also on Tuesday, a coalition of six electric utilities announced a new initiative that will help Biden achieve his goal. The companies are planning to build a "seamless network of charging stations" in and around the American South. The group plans to build chargers near major highways in every southern state, stretching as far west as Texas and as far north as Indiana, Ohio, and Virginia. This is not a joint venture. Each utility will build and run its own charging stations. But the goal is to make them appear to the customer as a unified network.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Volvo's entire car lineup will be fully electric by 2030, the Chinese-owned company said on Tuesday, joining a growing number of automakers planning to phase out fossil-fuel engines by the end of this decade. "I am totally convinced there will be no customers who really want to stay with a petrol engine," Volvo Chief Executive Hakan Samuelsson told reporters when asked about future demand for electric vehicles. "We are convinced that an electric car is more attractive for customers." The Swedish-based carmaker said 50% of its global sales should be fully-electric cars by 2025 and the other half hybrid models.

Owned by Hangzhou-based Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, Volvo will launch a new family of electric cars in the next few years, all of which will be sold online only. On Tuesday it unveiled the first of those models, the C40, a fully electric SUV, which will have an initial battery range of around 420 kilometers (261 miles). Volvo will include wireless upgrades and fixes for its new electric models -- an approach originally pioneered by electric carmaker Tesla Inc. This means the C40's range will be extended over time with software upgrades, Chief Technology Officer Henrik Green said. Volvo said it will "radically reduce" the complexity of its model line-up and provide customers with transparent pricing. The carmaker's global network of 2,400 traditional bricks-and-mortar dealers will remain open to service vehicles and to help customers make online orders.

California-based Aptera Motors "is rolling out the first mass-produced solar car this year," reports the Washington Post, after successfully crowdfunding a restart of their development effort: It's a three-wheel, ultra-aerodynamic electric vehicle covered in 34 square feet of solar cells. The car is so efficient that, on a clear day, those cells alone could provide enough energy to drive about 40 miles — more than twice the distance of the average American's commute.

The Aptera must undergo safety tests before the company can begin distribution, which it hopes to do by the end of this year. Even then, it's not clear that consumers will want to buy something that looks like a cross between the Batmobile and a beetle. The shadow of an initial attempt, which ended in bankruptcy, hangs over the founders as they gear up to launch their new product. But the Aptera's creators, Chris Anthony and Steve Fambro, think the world needs a car like theirs. Transportation is the largest source of planet-warming pollution in the United States. The Biden administration has made it a priority to reduce vehicle emissions, and several major automakers have pledged to phase out cars and light trucks with internal combustion engines.

After years of dreaming, maybe the time for driving on sunshine is finally here.
The Post also reports that 7,500 people have already put down a deposit for the two-seater car (which retails for $25,900). It can be charged just by plugging it into an electric outlet, the Post notes, while its creators claim that their car is four times more efficient than the average electric vehicle. "At least 90% of the power produced by the Aptera's solar panels goes toward making the vehicle move, the company says."

"Its extreme efficiency means the car can go 150 miles after just 15 minutes at an ordinary charging station."

Sergey Brin's secretive airship company LTA Research and Exploration is planning to power a huge disaster relief airship with an equally record-breaking hydrogen fuel cell. From a report: A job listing from the company, which is based in Mountain View, California and Akron, Ohio, reveals that LTA wants to configure a 1.5-megawatt hydrogen propulsion system for an airship to deliver humanitarian aid and revolutionize transportation. While there are no specs tied to the job listing, such a system would likely be powerful enough to cross oceans. Although airships travel much slower than jet planes, they can potentially land or deliver goods almost anywhere.

Hydrogen fuel cells are an attractive solution for electric aviation because they are lighter and potentially cheaper than lithium-ion batteries. However, the largest hydrogen fuel cell to fly to date is a 0.25-megawatt system (250 kilowatts) in ZeroAvia's small passenger plane last September. LTA's first crewed prototype airship, called Pathfinder 1, will be powered by batteries when it takes to the air, possibly this year. FAA records show that the Pathfinder 1 has 12 electric motors and would be able to carry 14 people. That makes it about the same size as the only passenger airship operating today, the Zeppelin NT, which conducts sightseeing tours in Germany and Switzerland. The Pathfinder 1 also uses some Zeppelin components in its passenger gondola.

Zero-emission trucking company Nikola has shuttered its so-called Powersports division and is pausing work on an electric personal watercraft and off-road vehicle first announced in April 2019. From a report: Nikola stopped work on the projects as part of a larger push to focus on getting its first hydrogen-powered truck out the door, following a number of stumbles in 2020. "We still own the NZT and WAV rights and have put the projects on pause. We may consider moving forward with them at a later time," a spokesperson tells The Verge. "Right now we are focusing on commercial trucking and hydrogen infrastructure." Nikola started pursuing an electric watercraft back in 2017 after it bought up one of the more promising startups working on the idea. The off-road vehicle was a hybrid of sorts, mixing dune buggy styling with the kinds of comforts found in passenger cars, like air conditioning. Nikola was promising the so-called NZT vehicle would get 590 horsepower and 150 miles of range. It was supposed to come to market this year at a starting price of $80,000.

After a twin-engine, wide-bodied Boeing 777 took off from a Denver airport — carrying 231 passengers and 10 crew members — its right engine failed. It began dropping debris on several neighborhoods below, CNBC reports.

America's Federal Aviation Administration issued a statement saying it was "aware of reports of debris in the vicinity of the airplane's flight path," CNBC adds, noting that less than 30 minutes later the plane had returned to the airport. No passengers were injured.

Today the FAA is issuing an emergency airworthiness directive, "requiring immediate or stepped-up inspections" of similar planes. In a statement FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said the move "will likely mean that some airplanes will be removed from service." Dickson's statement suggests the inspections will be directed at hollow fan blades that "are unique to this model of engine, used solely on Boeing 777 airplanes."

And more steps are being taken in Japan, reports Bloomberg: Meanwhile, Japan's transport ministry on Sunday ordered ANA Holdings and Japan Airlines to ground Boeing 777 planes they operate following the Denver engine failure. ANA operates 19 planes and JAL 13 with Pratt & Whitney's PW4000 engine that saw a failure with United Airlines plane.