FAA clears Boeing for 787 Dreamliners delivery Oracle cutting jobs in customer experience unit

Boeing has cleared a key hurdle with federal regulators and could soon resume deliveries of its large 787 airliner, which has been plagued by a series of production issues since late 2020, a person familiar with the matter said Saturday.

The Federal Aviation Administration notified Boeing on Friday that it would approve the company’s process for validating fixes to each plane before they are delivered to airline customers, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a decision that has not been publicly announced.

The FAA declined to comment and referred inquiries to Boeing. In a statement, Boeing said only, “We will continue to work transparently with the FAA and our customers towards resuming 787 deliveries.”

Approval to resume deliveries would be a boost for Boeing, which collects a big chunk of each plane’s purchase price at delivery. Boeing has accumulated a backlog of about 120 undelivered 787s. The plane, which Boeing calls the Dreamliner, lists at $248 million to $338 million depending on size, although airlines pay far less than sticker price.

Issues with the 787 started in 2020 when small gaps were found between panels of the fuselage that are made of carbon composite material.

That prompted inspections that turned up problems with a pressurization bulkhead at the front of the plane.

Boeing also had to replace titanium parts including fasteners after it was discovered that the Italian supplier used alloys that did not meet FAA standards.

Boeing has maintained that none of the issues raised immediate safety concerns.

It is not clear how long it will take Boeing to deliver all 120 backlogged planes, which were built at factories in Washington state and South Carolina. Each one will need to be cleared by the FAA.

American Airlines expects to get its first two

787s “in early August” but isn’t including them in the schedule until November.

Oracle Corp. is cutting jobs in the U.S. customer experience division, signaling a pullback in customer analytics and advertising services.

Some workers were told Monday that their positions had been eliminated, according to four people with direct knowledge of the matter. Junior sales employees as well as a division sales director were among those let go, according to one former worker who lost their job and asked not to be named to avoid professional repercussions. Rumors of pending cuts had swirled through the division in recent weeks, but management said the positions were safe, one former employee said.

The customer experience division provides analytics and advertising services. It has long lagged behind the growth of the rest of the Austin, Texas-based software company. During an event last year, Executive Vice President Douglas Kehring said the unit had “historically been probably a little more disappointing than it should have been.”