The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Wednesday allowed the re-use of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, which were banned last March after two model crashes that claimed the lives of 346 people.
The FAA stated that it had made this decision in consultation with aviation regulators around the world.
However, aircraft of this model will only be allowed to take off again once their computer software has been updated and the pilots have received appropriate training in flight simulators, according to an FAA order.
Both the Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash of the Indonesian airline Lion Air in October 2018, which killed 189 people, and the Boeing 737 MAX 8 crash of the Ethiopian airline Ethiopian Airlines in March 2019, which 157 people lost their lives, the plane quickly began to fly down and landed. After the second disaster, regulators around the world banned liner flights of this model.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 and Boeing 737 MAX 9 models are thought to be responsible for the disasters, which are designed to help pilots avoid raising the bow to dangerously high levels, but in unusual circumstances the system could have unexpectedly pushed the bow down and so strongly that the pilots were no longer able to lift it back.
The recertification process has remedied both this and other technical glitches found in the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.
Problems with the 737 MAX have severely damaged Boeing’s reputation and caused great financial loss to the company.
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