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A year after a panel blew out of a Boeing 737 Max during flight, the nation’s top aviation regulator says the company needs "a fundamental cultural shift” to put safety and quality above profits. Mike Whitaker, chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, said in an online post Friday that his agency also has more work to do in its oversight of Boeing. Whitaker, who plans to step down in two weeks to let President-elect Donald Trump pick his own FAA administrator, looked back on his decision last January to ground all 737 Max jets with similar panels called door plugs. Later, the FAA put more inspectors in Boeing factories, limited production of new 737s, and required Boeing to come up with a plan to fix manufacturing problems. “Boeing is working to make progress executing its comprehensive plan in the areas of safety, quality improvement and effective employee engagement and training,” Whitaker said. “But this is not a one-year project. What’s needed is a fundamental cultural shift at Boeing that’s oriented around safety and quality above profits. That will require sustained effort and commitment from Boeing, and unwavering scrutiny on our part.” 2 dead and 18 injured in Southern California plane crash Boeing on Friday issued an update on steps it has taken to improve safety and quality, including addressing concerns raised by employees and reinforcing their confidentiality protection. Boeing, which couldn’t build new 737s during a seven-week strike by machinists last fall, said it has strengthened training for mechanics and quality inspectors. The company said it updated a system to display the names of employees who perform metal-stamping work. The company also said it has “significantly reduced defects” in 737 fuselages built by Spirit AeroSystems, but it declined to provide numbers. Spirit is a key supplier that Boeing is in the process of buying for $4.7 billion. The National Transportation Safety Board continues to investigate the door-plug blowout on an Alaska Airlines Max jet. Despite a gaping hole in the side, pilots landed the plane safely in Portland, Oregon, and no serious injuries were reported. A month after the accident, investigators said in a preliminary report that bolts used to help secure the panel were not replaced after work in a Boeing factory. SKorea to inspect Boeing as it struggles to find cause of plane crash Whitaker said the FAA will review any recommendations that the safety board makes to improve FAA's oversight work. Last summer, he admitted that FAA's scrutiny of Boeing wasn't good enough.

Thousands of flight delays and cancellations rippled across the U.S. early Wednesday after computer outage led to a grounding order for all departing aircraft by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA is working to restore what is known as the Notice to Air Missions System. Before commencing a flight, pilots are required to consult NOTAMs, or Notices to Air Missions, which list potential adverse impacts on flights, from runway construction to the potential for icing. The system used to be telephone-based, with pilots calling dedicated flight service stations for the information, but has now moved online. While the White House initially said that there is no evidence of a cyberattack, President Joe Biden said “we don’t know” and told reporters that he’s directed the Department of Transportation to investigate the cause of the disruption. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment. The stop order was lifted just before 9 a.m., but delays and cancellations are expected to snowball. Departure gates at major airports are filled with aircraft that had been ordered grounded for hours. More than 21,000 flights were scheduled to take off in the U.S. today, mostly domestic trips, and about 1,840 international flights expected to fly to the U.S., according to aviation data firm Cirium. Read more: Number of flights canceled by Southwest Airlines is growing More than 4,300 flights were delayed and more than 800 were cancelled by around 9:30 a.m. The stop order by the FAA impacted almost all flights of shippers and passenger airlines. Some medical flights could get clearance and the outage did not impact any military operations or the mobility of U.S. defense forces. Biden addressed the FAA issue Wednesday before leaving the White House to accompany his wife to a medical procedure at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside of Washington. He said he had just been briefed by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who told him they still had not identified what went wrong. “I just spoke to Buttigieg. They don’t know what the cause is. But I was on the phone with him about 10 minutes," Biden said. "I told him to report directly to me when they find out. Air traffic can still land safely, just not take off right now. We don’t know what the cause of it is.” Buttigieg said in a tweet that he is in touch with the FAA and monitoring the situation. Delays and cancellations that began on East Coast quickly spread west, with disruptions at almost all major U.S. airports. The FAA said it was working on restoring its Notice to Air Missions System. “We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now,” the FAA said. “Operations across the National Airspace System are affected.” Julia Macpherson was on a United Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles on Wednesday when she learned of possible delays. “As I was up in the air I got news from my friend who was also traveling overseas that there was a power outage,” said Macpherson, who was returning to Florida from Hobart, Tasmania. Once she lands in Los Angeles, she still has a connection in Denver on her flight to Jacksonville, Florida. She said there have been no announcements on the flight about the FAA issue. Macpherson said she had already experienced a delay in her travels because her original flight from Melbourne to San Francisco was canceled and she rebooked a flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. Breakdowns in the NOTAM system appear to be rare. John Cox, a former airline pilot and aviation safety expert, said there has been talk in the aviation industry for years about trying to modernize the NOTAM system, but he did not know the age of the servers that the FAA uses. He couldn’t say whether a cyberattack was possible. “I’ve been flying 53 years. I’ve never heard the system go down like this," Cox said. "So something unusual happened.” Read more: Taiwan cancels flights as China holds military drills According FAA advisories, the NOTAM system failed at 8:28 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday preventing new or amended notices from being distributed to pilots. The FAA resorted to a telephone hotline in an effort to keep departures flying overnight, but as daytime traffic picked up it overwhelmed the telephone backup system. Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said the U.S. military flights were not impacted because the military has its own NOTAMS system separate from the FAA system and the military’s system was not affected by the outage. European flights into the U.S. appeared to be largely unaffected. Irish carrier Aer Lingus said services to the U.S. continue, and Dublin Airport’s website showed that its flights to Newark, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles were running on schedule. “Aer Lingus plan to operate all transatlantic flights as scheduled today,” the carrier said in a prepared statement. “We will continue to monitor but we do not anticipate any disruption to our services arising from the technical issue in the United States.” This is just the latest headache for travelers in the U.S. who faced flight cancellations over the holidays amid winter storms and a breakdown with staffing technology at Southwest Airlines. They also ran into long lines, lost baggage, and cancellations and delays over the summer as travel demand roared back from the COVID-19 pandemic and ran into staffing cutbacks at airports and airlines in the U.S. and Europe. The FAA said that it would provide frequent updates as it made progress.

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday ordered airlines in the United States to ground planes with the type of engine that blew apart after takeoff from Denver this past weekend until they can be inspected for stress cracks.

People insist they have spotted fleets of large drones crisscrossing rural America's night sky, their mission mysterious, raising questions that have veered into conspiracy theories and launching an investigation.