Boeing’s troubled 737 Max airplane will now remain grounded from passenger service until at least June or July, which is months later than the company had previously suggested.

And that means airlines will likely cancel Max flights through the busy summer travel season.

The three U.S. airlines that fly the 737 Max, American, Southwest, and United, had already removed the planes from their flight schedules into early June.

In a statement, Boeing confirms that it has told its customer airlines and its manufacturing suppliers that “we are currently estimating that the ungrounding of the 737 MAX will begin during mid-2020.” Industry sources tell NPR that means June or July at the earliest and ultimately, the FAA and other aviation regulators around the world will determine when the 737 Max is safe to fly passengers again, which could be months later.

The 737 Max has been grounded by regulators since last March, after the second of two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed 346 people. Investigators primarily blame a faulty automated flight control system on the Max for the crashes. The company has been working on software fixes for that and other problems ever since.

Until recently, Boeing had often suggested the fixes were almost ready to be submitted to regulators and approval was imminent. But in December, FAA Administrator Stephen Dickson pushed back against Boeing’s then-CEO Dennis Muilenburg for suggesting repeatedly that the Max would be recertified before the end of the year, saying the regulatory agency would not be pressured into granting quick approval.

Dickson summoned Muilenburg to Washington for a hastily called meeting, in which the FAA chief told the company’s chief executive that “Boeing continues to pursue a return-to-service schedule that is not realistic.” In a statement, the FAA said Dickson was also concerned with “the perception that some of Boeing’s public statements have been designed to force FAA into taking quicker action.”

During the meeting, Dickson “made clear that FAA’s certification requirements must be 100% complete before return to service.” And “he reminded Mr. Muilenburg that FAA controls the review process” and will take all the time it needs to get the 737 Max review right.

Shortly after the FAA’s rebuke, Muilenburg was forced out and replaced by Boeing board member and former General Electric executive David Calhoun as CEO.

In a statement today, the FAA says “the agency is following a thorough, deliberate process to verify that all proposed modifications to the Boeing 737 MAX meet the highest certification standards. We continue to work with other safety regulators to review Boeing’s work as the company conducts the required safety assessments and addresses all issues that arise during testing. We have set no timeframe for when the work will be completed.”

Boeing’s efforts to fix the MCAS flight control system on the MAX have been plagued by setback after setback.

In pushing back the anticipated date of the plane’s return to service, new CEO Calhoun appears to be trying to set a new tone. The new estimate “is informed by our experience to date with the certification process,” Boeing says in its statement.

The new estimate of when the plane may finally be approved to return to service “is informed by our experience to date with the certification process,” Boeing says in its statement. “It is subject to our ongoing attempts to address known schedule risks and further developments that may arise in connection with the certification process. It also accounts for the rigorous scrutiny that regulatory authorities are rightly applying at every step of their review of the 737 MAX’s flight control system,” including pilot training requirements.

“Returning the MAX safely to service is our number one priority, and we are confident that will happen,” Boeing’s statement continues. “We acknowledge and regret the continued difficulties that the grounding of the 737 MAX has presented to our customers, our regulators, our suppliers, and the flying public.”

The 737 Max crashes and subsequent crisis at the airplane manufacturer has been taken a toll on morale among Boeing employees and retirees in the Seattle area, where most of the company’s planes are built.

CEO Calhoun is in Seattle this week, meeting with Boeing employees and for the first time, he plans to take questions from reporters in a conference call Wednesday.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for water crisis victims to sue state and local government officials in Flint, Mich.

For years, Flint city officials and state regulators have argued that they are protected by “qualified immunity” from being sued for their role in the water contamination crisis. But lower courts have ruled to the contrary.

In refusing to take up a pair of cases involving the lead-tainted water, the Supreme Court has upheld those lower court rulings.

Attorney Michael Pitt, co-lead counsel on the class action lawsuit, which includes thousands of Flint residents suing for damages from the 2014 incident, welcomed the decision as a major victory.

He said, “It’s time for the people of Flint to start feeling like they are going to get their day in court,” Michigan Radio reporter Steve Carmody reported. “This just moves the entire process closer to that day.”

Pitt added that his clients have thus far “been denied justice.”

The initial lawsuit turned away by the high court was filed in 2016. It argues that officials, including then-Gov. Rick Snyder, acted indifferently to the risk of bodily harm that residents faced when they were exposed to high levels of lead and other contaminants after the city’s drinking water source was switched to draw from the Flint River in 2014. The move was made without properly treating pipes for corrosion, letting lead and bacteria into the water supply.

In an April 2019 ruling, U.S. District Judge Judith Levy ruled that Snyder “was indifferent because instead of mitigating the risk of harm caused by the contaminated water, he covered it up. In private, he worried about the need to return Flint to [Detroit’s water system] and the political implications of the crisis. But in public, he denied all knowledge, despite being aware of the developing crisis. As a result, plaintiffs were lured into a false sense of security.”

More than a year later, the city switched to using water from Lake Huron. But that came too late to prevent a dozen fatalities.

During the period that Flint’s tap water came from the Flint River, a Legionnaires disease outbreak occurred, killing at least 12 people. Dozens of others were hospitalized.

Although government officials initially claimed the water was safe to drink, 18 months later they admitted it was not.

It wasn’t until late 2016 that the city’s water supply finally met federal safety standards, though some residents remain skeptical of those findings.

Defense attorney Pitt says it could be another year before an actual trial begins.

The events in Flint have triggered scores of Midwest cities to remove aging lead water pipes.

As Tom Neltner at the Environmental Defense Fund told WBEZ’s Monica Eng, “Our country has an estimated 6 million lead service lines. … And it’s like drinking water through a lead straw. So where people have them, it’s one of the most significant sources of lead in drinking water.”

About 180 cities and towns across the country are taking action to remove harmful pipes.

In Flint, crews have been working to replace old lead and galvanized service lines with copper pipes.

Near the iced-over Bering Sea, parka-clad workers for the U.S. Census Bureau are gathering in a remote fishing village along the southwestern rim of Alaska to resume a U.S. tradition seen only once a decade — a count of every person living in the country.

After years of largely under-the-radar planning by the federal government and months of turmoil arising from the Trump administration’s failed push to add a citizenship question, the 2020 census officially begins Tuesday in Toksook Bay, Alaska — population 590, according to the 2010 head count.

The bureau’s director, Steven Dillingham, is expected to arrive by plane to attend a ceremony at the gymnasium of Nelson Island School, where community members are marking the day with traditional Yup’ik dancing and drumming.

For most households in the country — including those in the Lower 48, Hawaii and the U.S. territories, as well as Alaska’s major cities — the count is not set to roll out until March.

But since Alaska became a state in 1959, the Census Bureau has started tallying Alaska’s most remote residents in January, when the frozen ground makes it easier for the federal government’s door knockers to reach far-flung communities. To get around the country’s largest state by land area, the bureau’s workers rely on bush planes, snow machines, or snowmobiles, and dog sleds to get to villages to ask people their name, sex, age, race and other demographic information.

Since the 2000 census, the bureau has selected one village to be the site of the first counting, beginning with Unalakleet along the state’s central coast and then Noorvik in northern Alaska. This year, census workers are starting in the state’s southwest corner, in Toksook Bay, home to members of the Nunakauyarmiut Tribe. It was first thrust into the national spotlight after the Census Bureau announced it had selected the village in 2018.

“We’re all excited about it,” says Alexie Jimmie, 76, whose family was one of the first to settle in the village in 1964, when it was just a fishing camp. “I hope that people counting for the census will go to every house, every home so that everybody can be counted. That’s very important.”

The future of Toksook Bay, along with every other community in the U.S., will be shaped by the results of the census, which the federal government is expected to start releasing by the end of this year. The numbers are used to distribute congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states, as well as an estimated $1.5 trillion a year in federal funding for public services.

Washington, D.C., politics, however, have often diverted the public’s attention away from the constitutionally mandated count. As the census officially launches in Alaska, lawmakers are regrouping Tuesday on Capitol Hill to resume the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. Last year, days before printers were scheduled to start producing census mailers, Trump announced he was looking into delaying the count for the first time in U.S. history after the Supreme Court ruled to keep the citizenship question he wanted off census forms.

Last week, the bureau confirmed that more than 120 million paper census questionnaires have been printed for the count.

In Toksook Bay and some other rural parts of the country, however, they won’t be arriving in the mail. Instead, census workers are collecting people’s responses through in-person visits, beginning with the home of Lizzie Chimiugak Nenguryarr, an elder of Toksook Bay. Dillingham, the bureau’s director, is himself expected to interview Nenguryarr for the first enumeration of the 2020 census.

“It’s overwhelming for people to come in and say this is such a big honor,” Nenguryarr says in Yup’ik through interpretation by one of her daughters, Katie Schwartz Nuiyaaq. “This is just one in every day that comes rolling in.”

Toksook Bay has seen a flurry of activity these past few days. The day before the count, classes ended early at Nelson Island School to allow mourners to pay their respects to a former resident, George Paul Miisaq, whose body was returned home to be buried in the village cemetery.

A day earlier, Nenguryarr, who is a locally renowned member of an Yup’ik dancing group, held an early celebration for what she considered to be at least her 90th birthday, based on a baptismal record.

“I want everybody to show love and compassion towards all human beings, young and old,” Nenguryarr said.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for water crisis victims to sue state and local government officials in Flint, Mich.

For years, Flint city officials and state regulators have argued they are protected by “qualified immunity” from being sued for their role in the water contamination crisis. But lower courts have ruled to the contrary.

In refusing to take up a pair of cases involving the lead-tainted water, the Supreme Court has upheld those lower court rulings.

Attorney Michael Pitt, co-lead counsel on the class action lawsuit which includes thousands of Flint residents suing for damages from the 2014 incident, welcomed the decision as a major victory.

He said, “It’s time for the people of Flint to start feeling like they are going to get their day in court,” Michigan Public Radio reporter Steve Carmody reported. “This just moves the entire process closer to that day.”

Pitt added that his clients have thus far “been denied justice.”

The initial lawsuit turned away by the high court was filed in 2016. It argues officials, including then-Gov. Rick Snyder, acted indifferently to the risk of bodily harm residents faced when they were exposed to high levels of lead and other contaminants after the city’s drinking water source was switched to draw from the Flint River in 2014. The move was made without properly treating pipes for corrosion, letting lead and bacteria into the water supply.

In an April 2019 ruling, U.S. District Judge Judith Levy ruled Gov. Snyder “was indifferent because instead of mitigating the risk of harm caused by the contaminated water, he covered it up.

“In private he worried about the need to return Flint to [Detroit’s water system] and the political implications of the crisis. But in public, he denied all knowledge, despite being aware of the developing crisis. As a result, plaintiffs were lured into a false sense of security,” Levy wrote.

More than a year later the city switched to using water from Lake Huron. But that came too late to prevent a dozen fatalities.

During the period Flint’s tap water came from the Flint River, a Legionnaires Disease outbreak occurred, killing at least 12 people. Dozens of others were hospitalized.

Although government officials initially claimed the water was safe to drink, 18 months later they admitted it was not.

It wasn’t until late 2016 that the city’s water supply finally met federal safety standards, though some residents remain skeptical of those findings.

Defense attorney Pitt says it could be another year before an actual trial begins.

The events in Flint have triggered scores of Midwest cities to remove aging lead water pipes.

As Tom Neltner at the Environmental Defense Fund told WBEZ’s Monica Eng, “Our country has an estimated 6 million lead service lines. … And it’s like drinking water through a lead straw. So where people have them, it’s one of the most significant sources of lead in drinking water.”

About 180 cities and towns across the country are taking action to remove harmful pipes.

In Flint, crews have been working to replace old lead and galvanized service lines with copper pipes.